eta consulting has collaborated with Extended Studies, University of Nevada, Reno to deliver a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification class since 2016.
Earlier this month, eta took fourteen Green Belt professionals for a tour of Via Seating. The tour was led by Adam Cilonis, Via’s Vice President of Production and Order Management, who got his Green Belt certification via the inaugural Green Belt class in 2016. Adam conducted 50 tours last year, and this year he is on track to beat that number.
Via’s tours are for people who want to witness Lean in action and for Via’s clients! Via has discovered that becoming Lean and sharing their learnings has had a positive impact on sales. During the tour Adam shared that they have discontinued advertising in magazines, and now focus on Lean as both their operations strategy as well as their marketing strategy.
Tours are an integral part of the Lean journey and are open even to competitors. In fact, Toyota went as far as helping competitor GM set up an entire plant (NUMMI) with their know-how. Lean depends on a culture of collaboration and a competitor that tours without reciprocating is unlikely to be able to develop a successful enough Lean culture to threaten the companies they tour.
Lean focuses on People, Processes, and Customers. It took Via about two years to get Lean going and in the four years since some of the benefits Via has seen are as follows:
People Benefit: Wages have nearly doubled (81% increase) for production associates.
Process Benefit: Via has been able to build 3x the chairs with the same number of people.
Customer Benefit 1: Via has gained their customer’s trust by drastically reducing their lead times, by making the lead times predictable, and by always meeting the lead times.
Customer Benefit 2: While their competitors have been increasing their prices by 8% annually, Via has been increasing their prices by only 4%.
And for Via: Sales have increased 2.5x.
Green Belt tour takers shared with eta what they learned from Via, and also suggestions for Via. Worth noting is that learnings were process focused while suggestions were people focused, which is exactly what one would expect from a Lean tour.
Table 1: Tour takers survey data
