Angel Fontanez, Machine Shop Manager, and Dale Lipinski, Manufacturing Engineer
(Movie link)

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Angel clarifies measureables tracked and prominently displayed throughout the plant

Everything is documented

Pentair assembly line with machining center (right rear)

All Kanban bins are blue and easily clasped (right) or erected as needed

by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO

l have found that all successful lean manufacturing companies have one thing in common.  Their “lean” vision is always driven from the very top of the company.  After that every company seems to take a little different path to reach their “lean” objectives.

I recently spent time with Angel Fontanez, Machine Shop Manager, and Dale Lipinski, Manufacturing Engineer, for Pentair Water Treatment (http://www.pentairwater.com) in Brookfield, WI.  Pentair is the world leader in commercial/residential water softener control valves.

Pentair aggressively utilizes the Kaizen event in their lean journey.  A Kaizen event is bringing together a cross-functional group for a full week to assault a specific process to make it as "lean" as possible.  Pentair will assemble three Kaizen teams up to eight times a year.  Each team will attack its own project.  So, Pentair will implement at least 24 separate projects every year (movie link).  As Angel explained, “a quantifiable example of one of our Kaizen events is that over the last two years we have been able to reduce our inventory by over 60%.”

I was impressed with how quickly “lean” has become the Pentair culture.  In less than four years, I could see and feel lean everywhere.    The floors shine, and almost everything is painted white or blue.  The plant is cleaner than some hospitals I’ve visited.  Pentair uses Kanban to pull orders through the plant by customer demand.  There are graphs everywhere tracking continuous improvement in terms of scrap, set-up time and cell productivity.

Do they have foreign competition? I always like to ask this question because we all know that much of U.S. manufacturing has been impacted by foreign competition the last thee or four years, particularly by China.  Well, in Pentair’s case, not really.  Their product is manufactured for the United States market and export.  Their products are price competitive.  A huge change in their culture has been to move from batch manufacturing to single piece assembly quantities.  Pentair has now begun to integrate machining into their assembly lines.  A difficult move, but their assemblers now know how to operate machine tools.

Were there any negative surprises as they entered a lean environment?  The change of their culture, of course.  We all resist change.  Bringing people along quickly is always a difficult task.  As an example, in the past their employees were paid for whatever quantity they produced, whether it was a good product or not.  Today, there’s accountability.  Everything is measured and documented.  This was a huge adjustment for their staff.

Are they where they want to be?  Both Angel and Dale feel that they are about half way.  To illustrate — a continuing Kaizen event is machine set-up.  Set-up used to average six hours (set up definition:  last good part to first good part).  They now average two hours, but expect to get to one half hour and eventually ten minutes. 

Another Kaizen challenge is to eliminate their warehouse. The only inventory will be at the point of manufacture.  I have absolutely no doubt that these projects will be accomplished in the near future.

Today all processes and methodology are clearly defined and documented.  The entire plant now operates as one unit compared to the old days when the machine shop, engineering and design, etc. all ran as separate companies.  I asked the question, “how difficult is it to buy capital equipment in this lean environment?”  Angel said there is one over riding principal, “creativity before capital.”  The Pentair culture is to always create and innovate new ideas.  If they require capital equipment to implement a project, they do it!  Dale concluded our meeting by summarizing the success of Pentair, “Today we ship more product with one less shift, and we have just completed a record sales year.”  Lean certainly works at Pentair, and it is for everyone.