Leadership & LEAN surviving Covid19

Twenty-one years ago, I committed to making Lean our management system. Now more than ever, I’m glad I did. The Vibco team is glad we did. And so are our customers and suppliers. Lean helped turn Vibco into an organization that is fast, flexible, and adaptable to changing circumstances. And how our circumstances have changed in the last few weeks!

We are healthy we have a solid emergency action plan. Weeks before the State of Emergency was declared in Rhode Island, we bought sanitizing supplies before everyone was sold out. We also worked with our supply chain to make sure we had product on the shop floor ready for production and asked them to identify any problems that would obstruct material or information FLOW.

The Vibco team has been doing a deep cleaning every morning, even the places we cannot see. My commitment to 6S has consequence now. Sort, set in order, standardize, shine (disinfect), sustain, and safety. The virus has generated a new level of personal urgency and teamwork; urgency for everyone to participate every day. Everyone participates in daily cleaning, and we have found more things to rid of that we don’t need. Having only the essentials makes daily cleaning quicker and more thorough. You can see the clean.

Human safety is my number one job when people are in the building. Second, we are an essential supplier to pharmaceutical, chemical, and food companies, power plants, water systems, agriculture, department of defense, and more. They count on us. Those companies might not be able to manufacture a cure for coronavirus or feed hungry families if we are sloppy in our work and let team members get sick. We must be able to supply the vibrators that customers need for their process. It is our duty!

While regular business is off, we are supplying many new customers because global supply chains have been severely disrupted. Because of Lean management, we can still offer the “Same Day/Next Day” performance to new customers and keep the product flowing. We are way ahead of many companies that remain paralyzed. Vibco team members are flexing like crazy to support internal and external customers. If this happened to us 15 or 20 years ago, we might not have survived.

Things change every hour and every day. Rules change, customer needs change, external forces suddenly appear. We can’t predict it. But we know we must be ready and able to respond to anything and keep flowing the work. Our operations must be available every day, whether it’s the coronavirus or some other disruption. Lean is our savior. My heartfelt thanks to Toyota, Shingijutsu USA, Bob Emiliani, Bruce Hamilton GBMP, Lesa Nichols from Toyota and so many others over the last 21 years who have helped me and the entire Vibco team learn and apply hundreds of important lessons about people and processes. We would not be able to do what we do today without them.

Karl Wadensten

CEO

Vibco Vibrators