Lean Manufacturing

As far as our manufacturing process goes, we’ve been practicing lean manufacturing since 2003. At that time, we began a cultural shift across all levels of our organization toward focusing on how we can do our jobs better, smarter and more efficiently. By embracing lean manufacturing principles, we’ve been able to slash waste and unnecessary movements which increased productivity and led to improved delivery time.

Some tools we’ve adopted to help us in our pursuit of lean:

Cellular Manufacturing
Kaizens
Kanbans
Visual reinforcement & visual scheduling

As an ISO 9001:2015 certified manufacturer, our Lean achievements have been highlighted at trade events and in trade publications. We co-sponsored a Lean Champions Roundtable with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) to discuss our Lean practices with representatives from industries such as precision tools, curtains/draperies, footwear soles, foam tape, fiber optics, screen printing, electronic packaging, plastic injection molding, and beverages.

We’re proud to be noted within the industry for how effectively we’ve integrated Lean into our culture across all levels of the organization.

Committed to Your Success

Sweepers - Dorinda Zalauskas, Eric LaTulippe, Bonnie Hamelin, Mike Letendre, Chris Toomey, Chris Kowalczyk

When the pandemic started, the immediate focus became, “How do we keep our employees safe, while ensuring that we can keep making products for our customers?” As an essential business supplying the medical, personal care, food, beverage, and transportation markets, employee health had to be a major focus. Without our employees, nothing goes out the door. Of particular concern were our production and lab employees – more than half of FLEXcon’s employee population - whose jobs require them to be on site to complete their work.

Armed with recommendations from the CDC and all the tools in our lean methodology toolbox, the Sweepers were born. Comprised of a cross-functional group with specialists in lean methodology, this team was tasked with creating standardized cleaning and disinfecting protocols throughout all FLEXcon locations with the goal of minimizing contraction of the virus. This would help ensure that all of our team members would go home safe and well to better serve our customers and the community. Not that cleaning wasn’t already happening, but their challenge was to standardize and raise the bar, as well as ensure that every single employee understood and could follow the process.

“This was a collaborative effort like no other,” says Bonnie Hamelin, beta manager. “We had many groups marching toward the same goal – to achieve a standard that everyone could have confidence in.” That confidence made employees feel safe coming to work every day. And we’ve had very few instances of COVID-19 among our employees, which has translated into meeting our customers’ needs without disruption as they also navigate the pandemic.

“I feel safe coming to work,” says Dorinda Zalauskas, manufacturing projects administrator, “and I feel that many of my co-workers do as well. I also see great teamwork and communication every day resulting in further improvements. It’s a win-win, for our employees and our customers.”