Video on Lean at ACT Trailers

This morning, I received the following email from a manufacturer of trailers in Indiana, with a link to a Youtube video they produced for their dealers. It is a good case of organizing production around the demand structure. At the end of the video, they acknowledge Bill Waddell for his help. Here is the full message:

From: “Lucas Landis” <LucasL@aluminumtrailer.com>
To: “Michel Baudin” <michel.baudin@takttimes.com>
Cc:
Subject: RE: Context of your video
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:08:09 -0700

We are a 13 year old company that manufactures specialty trailers in
Nappanee, IN. As with a lot of manufacturing plants during the end of
the last decade, our company went through a terrible austerity period –
employees were laid off, the CEO was replaced, and a myriad of other
radical decisions were made as a result of the downward economy. Out of
the ashes of that, the founding CEO of the company had been doing a lot
of research on LEAN manufacturing. Because we were more or less
starting over, Steve Brenneman (CEO) decided to implement the LEAN
philosophy to maintain a more sustainable company that could avoid
future pitfalls and offer a more superior product. We are now into our
3rd year of our LEAN Journey and this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpysKrqYxCI documents our Value Stream
process. We created this video to help our Dealers understand our
business philosophy and system. Following a previous Kaizen event, we
are in the process of taking LEAN to the front end of our business,
which means getting our distributors in-line with our process. The
video should explain the rest.

Hope that helps.

Lucas Landis
ATC TrailersMarketing
Phone: 574-773-8341
Fax: 574-773-7769
mailto:LucasL@aluminumtrailer.com
http://AluminumTrailer.com