In 2021, A. Stucki Company began a series of Continuous Improvement Practitioner training sessions for leaders from its family of companies. The training is part of Stucki’s commitment to continuous improvement principles at all of its 23 locations in North and South America.
TONY SIWEK, operations manager at Salco Products, began introducing changes at their Lemont, Ill., location immediately after completing the training in early 2023. “We’ve reconfigured the workflow in many of our departments, reorganized a warehouse to streamline unloading and storage, and introduced other improvement principles that have resulted in greater efficiency and productivity,” he said.
For example, Salco cut hatch cover assembly time almost in half in 2023, from an average of five minutes to 2.8 minutes per cover, and trimmed that by another 30 seconds in early 2024. Tony also introduced value stream mapping and analysis, which involves using a flow chart to document every step of a process, and the 5S process (sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain) to better organize everyday tasks. “We continue to gain knowledge and see significant results every day as we apply the things that were taught in the CIP course,” he said.
According to MIKE WALL, continuous improvement coach at Stucki, the CIP training goes beyond theory to teach practical application in the workplace. “It’s exciting to see people take what they’ve learned in the course and apply it to real-world situations,” he said.
For more information on Stucki’s commitment to continuous improvement, visit https://stucki.com/quality-and-safety/.
The warehouse at Salco Products was reorganized using principles learned at the Stucki CIP course.
