Larry Davis
President, Daman Products
(click for streaming video)

What made Larry’s presentation so energizing is that he has done it.  His company is “lean”! He talked with confidence and credibility, and we listened…  When Daman top management first looked into “lean” they were very excited about the prospect of increasing throughput and quality and reducing costs and plant chaos.  However, they were a bit troubled that their “lean” journey would have them reduce production lots, inventory and all forecasting. 

Customers were only willing to pay for less than 5% of Daman's activities.  The other 95% was non-value add, things like rework, training, recruiting, expediting, scrap, job costing, downtime, etc.  Their culture was to focus on the 5% and work hard to reduce cycle time and rarely address the 95% non-value add stuff.  However, as they moved deep in “lean,” they did attack the non-value add items, they eventually increased the value add part of their operation to about 20% of the whole.

Larry told some wonderful war stories.  One was about their most experienced machinist who just couldn’t adapt to their “lean” direction.  After trying to work with him for three years Daman finally had to let him go and saw an immediate productivity increase.

What has Larry learned since taking the Daman “lean” journey on the road? (click here to see and hear what Larry learned).  He’s still surprised that after 5 years how few companies are involved in “lean.”  Also, Daman realized that while they manufacture manifolds their real business is “sales and marketing.”  While that may seem like an insignificant realization, it isn’t.  As a “sales and marketing” company, they went to their distributors and helped them revise how they work with their OEM customers and order manifolds for inventory.  With that approach they were able to slash a number of redundant (and non-value) activities involved in the order process.  Inventory levels dropped for everyone.  A “manifold” manufacturing company probably would not have done that.

Larry emphasized the need for an enthusiastic and committed top management.  He doesn’t feel a company has a chance of being “lean” unless the top person drives it hard.  He also stressed that a company needs outside consultant involvement to do “lean” effectively.  A good consultant will keep everyone focused on those invisible non-value add items. 

Finally, a “lean” company must be willing and prepared to make mistakes (in a blameless environment), and learn from them. 

The customer feedback on the seminar has been extremely positive.  Some have already asked for another seminar with more implementation strategy discussions.  I am confident that those of us who participated in Larry’s “lean” presentation are now even more committed to helping our customers understand the huge impact of eliminating their non-value activities.