Lean Shop
Lean shop is the business development blog of K-Form. Follow us as we use a spirit of continual improvement to grow with lean manufacturing tools. We will discuss lean techniques, books, and the general business of manufacturing.
In anticipation of market and regulatory trends, K-Form is upgrading our Iridite chemical film to a RoHS compliant process eliminating the use of hexavalent chromate. The new process, called Iridite NCP, meets or exceeds MIL-DTL-5541F (Type 2) Class 1A/Class 3 requirements and is approved under MIL-QPL-81706 (CHEMICAL CONVERSION MATERIALS FOR COATING ALUMINUM AND ALUMINUM ALLOYS). ..
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Several reliable sources recommended Lean Production Simplified by Pascal Dennis as a firm starting point on my journey for Lean manufacturing knowledge. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) placed the book on the reading list for Lean certification. This Shingo prize winning book bills itself as “A plain language guide to the world’s most powerful ..
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K-Form focuses on strengthening core competencies through innovation. Product and process innovation provide the ability to lead new market requirements. After almost a year of effort, the General Services Administration (GSA) awarded K-Form a five-year contract (contract #GS-35F-0342X) on Schedule 70 (IT) for RF Shielded Server Racks. This contract award adds to a list of ..
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What if a process tool existed that could reduce product development cost and time to market while increasing product quality? Many product engineers and managers incorrectly believe that achieving improvements in all three areas is impossible.
Companies measure business success many ways including financial metrics, employee development, and customer satisfaction. These measures assess the alignment and progress towards organizational goals. K-Form takes pride in the success of our customers. This pride is not uncommon. However, placing customer success as a top level business goal is uncommon. We think that should change. ..
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Customer satisfaction is one of the worst metrics an organization can chase. Several broadly used organizational standards, such as ISO 9001:2008, demand the use of customer satisfaction metrics, but fail to provide a proper definition or guidelines of measurement. I know committees draft these standards as descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, documents, but an ill-defined ..
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After years of consulting, the entrepreneurial spirit took Greg Lane. He is confident in his background as a Lean practitioner. In fact, he is so confident he purchased a machine shop without ever having operated a CNC machine. This book details the transformation of a high mix, low volume (HMLV) manufacturing company using lean manufacturing ..
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For 15 years, the K-Form website has prominently featured Kform Project Manager positioned alongside our manufacturing business. With the release of the new website (Feb. 2011), we dropped the software site. In this article, we would like to address the question of why. The Beginning In the late Eighties, K-Form (Circle-K-Industries at the time) decided ..
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Difficult economic times drive businesses to more intensely focus on competitiveness through reducing costs and increasing productivity (capacity, throughput). The elimination of non-value added work is a key component of the lean manufacturing concept addressing waste. K-Form identified CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) as a source of waste and an opportunity for improvement. The application of ..
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After considerable thought and effort, K-form is launching a new WordPress based site. The site features a new design and layout to coincide with other branding and marketing efforts. More importantly, the site focuses on communicating with existing and potential customers our capabilities and process.If you have a moment, browse the portfolio page to see ..
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