01 · Situation
A slow season, used well.
Revenue had dipped, mostly with the seasons. The owner saw it as the right moment to invest in fixing the operational issues in the Mexico plant.
Leadership and support teams sat in Southern California. The builders were across the border. Two teams, two languages, one operation.
02 · Problem
Everyone was busy. Orders were still late.
- On-time delivery was poor, order after order
- Waste showed up at almost every step
- Inventory kept piling up in the warehouse
- Builders spent a lot of their day walking the plant to find what they needed
None of this was a people problem. It was a system problem. The floor simply wasn’t set up for the work to flow.
03 · Action
Train both sides. Then build the first cell.
We built a Lean training program and ran it twice: in Spanish for the team in Mexico, and in English for leadership and support in California. That turned out to matter more than anything else. Both sides of the house started speaking the same language of Lean.
In the plant, we assessed the floor quickly and Leaned out the facility, removing waste as we went. Then we designed and built a one-piece flow lean cell, so each unit moved from step to step without waiting in a pile.
04 · Result
Ten weeks in, the numbers moved.
The first cell improved operations right away: a 45% cut in lead time and a 30% gain in labor efficiency, all within 10 weeks of kickoff.
One-piece flow cells
Within 10 weeks of kickoff
Lead time indexed to the starting point
Labor efficiency indexed to the starting point
The best part came after. The team in Mexico, on their own initiative, built four more one-piece flow cells for other product families.
That’s what it looks like when it sticks.