Hear how Willamette Valley Company has improved quality, reduced costs, increased productivity, increased leadership commitment and employee engagement across the company, and much, much more.
The Willamette Valley Company was frustrated with the peaks and valleys of lean engagement, effort and need for consistent management intervention to maintain progress. Although lean had provided past results, it still struggled with sustaining progress and change. Discover how the company wanted to build a lean culture that would be self-sustaining, successful, engaged and drive business results in KPIs, as well as other areas. The use of an AME lean assessment tool provided a roadmap to apply a robust PDCA cycle, which was then used to apply a system to improvement efforts, rather than another 5S or kaizen event. Learn how the company’s changes have resulted in: improved quality with an increased target from 85 percent to 90 percent; reduced costs in key growth product line; a reduction in safety incidents; improved maintenance; Q&E kaizen participation from 50 percent to 94 percent.
Willamette Valley Company is a leading-edge, privately-owned multinational corporation that manufactures and distributes a wide variety of custom products and services throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Asia and South America. While its roots are in the wood products industry and go back to its inception in 1952, the company’s expertise and solutions now encompass innovative coatings, polyurethanes, fillers, adhesives, robotics, parts, engineering and much more, across more than a dozen industries and specialties. www.wilvaco.com
Bob Halligan is director of manufacturing for the Willamette Valley Company, leading four sites in the U.S. and one in Chile. He has been with the company for over 28 years and has served in production, customer service and various management roles. Halligan also serves as board president for Emerald Valley High Performance Enterprise Consortium, a regional group of manufacturing and service organizations pursing lean enterprise and high performance business processes. He is a board member of the Oregon Workforce Investment Board and past board president of Lane Workforce Partnership, Lane County’s Local Workforce Investment Board. Halligan has a bachelor’s degree from George Fox and an MBA from Northwest Christian College.
