Lean Manufacturing Principles Form the Foundation of our Quality Culture
As an extension of each customer's manufacturing operations, Milwaukee Electronics strives to provide the highest quality and level of responsiveness by minimizing waste and inefficiency. Lean manufacturing initiatives enhance responsiveness to customer order variation while minimizing the level of purchasing transactions. Milwaukee Electronics application of Lean Principles and Teaming for Optimized Supply Chain Efficiency was featured by Circuits Assembly magazine in the article "Eliminating Muda: One Company's Journey" and in our white paper Teaming for Optimized Supply Chain Efficiency. (note link to these resources)
Milwaukee Electronics' Lean philosophy follows many of the practices established by Toyota and followed by manufacturing companies across the world. As part of our PCB new product introduction process, we make design for manufacturability (DFM) recommendations on circuit board design to minimize defect opportunities. We utilize: cellular manufacturing techniques, single-piece flow, standardized work, pull systems and 6S (Sort, Straighten, Scrub, Standardize, Safety and Sustain) tools to drive continuous daily improvement in our electronic assembly processes. Patterned after the Toyota production system, Milwaukee Electronics trains employees to see "muda" (Japanese for "waste") and systematically eliminate it in processes. Our goal is to continually reduce customer lead-time, the floor space required for production and drive excess inventory out of the system. We have been utilizing Lean as our primary continuous improvement technique for over a decade.
