Aerospace Manufacturing of Components
After a frustrating period of not reaching production rate targets, they looked for outside help to turn around performance.
“Leading metrics are more visible and are used earlier to adjust course. Leaders have become area owners, not just task or people managers, accountable for their results.”
—Unit Leader
Context/Challenge
This aerospace manufacturer produces components for commercial and military aircraft. After a frustrating period of not reaching production rate targets, they looked for outside help to turn around performance.
RLG performance coaches joined their team to bring new ideas and accelerate change. Over an intense, focused engagement, RLG coaches worked in two production areas to build performance focus, leadership capability and introduce tools for waste elimination using Lean principles.
Approach
Recognizing their need to build trust and energy towards improvement, RLG coaches and client leadership started with a clear message of why, when and how the change program would occur. This included a change roadmap with attention to addressing widely known process problems, quality barriers and production bottlenecks.
- Rapid Production Assessment: Examining flow, interferences and bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvements.
- Coaching Leaders and Teams: Change is hard, and organizations must overcome embedded culture and ways of working. Coaching leaders helped connect the how with the why, established stronger patterns, and more confidence in decision-making to win the day, week, and month.
- Production Floor Improvements: addressing two main concerns: units taking hundreds of hours longer than the production budget, and slow production with too few units produced.
Result
RLG helped this client stop an 18-month decline and return to profitability.
- Unit deliveries increased by 45%.
- Shop floor durations were cut by nearly 50% on critical parts.
- Significant cost reductions through quality improvements and fewer manufacturing hours.
- Sustainable solutions were left in place, including Leader Standard Work, Operating Rhythm, and systematic processes for improvement teams and problem-solving.
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