10.17.23

Fortive’s CEO Kaizen: A Week of Continuous Improvement

Fortive’s CEO Kaizen week, October 2-6, 2023, was a celebration of collaboration and continuous improvement. Over the course of the week, 41 teams from Fortive’s businesses around the world came together to solve customer challenges, unlock opportunities for growth, and drive sustainable results.

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen literally means Change for the Good. Not only does it describe the continuous improvement mindset, but it refers to formal events where a team comes together for a concentrated effort to improve a process by quickly eliminating waste. At Fortive, Kaizen is how we learn and deploy the Fortive Business System in a “hands-on” way at the Gemba.  Gemba means the REAL Place and the REAL thing where the work gets done.

CEO Kaizen week

The week kicked off with ceremonies hosted at Qualitrol alongside other Fortive companies Accruent, Fluke Health Solutions, Fluke Reliability, Hengstler Dynapar, Industrial Scientific, Provation, Tektronix, and ServiceChannel. Fortive CEO and President Jim Lico spoke to attendees and highlighted the importance of working together towards a common goal.

Throughout the week, the teams were immersed in kaizen and worked collaboratively to achieve meaningful, sustainable results. The event was filled with remarkable moments, and it was clear that the teams were achieving more than they thought possible.

Qualitrol Shingijutsu Kaizen

Qualitrol hosted four Shingijutsu “Shin” Kaizens in our Fairport, NY facility under the mentorship of a Lean expert/consultant who joined us from Japan. These cells used 5S and Lean principles to eliminate waste and increase production capacity. One cell cut turnover time nearly in half pursuing a 30% increase in production capacity, while another cell needed to increase production capacity 30% and reduce their cycle time 23% to achieve their targeted On Time Delivery (OTD) rate. Lastly, shipping and receiving needed to increase pallet locations 40% to meet peak demand capacity and managed to increase space 67% while reducing operator travel time. The impact in these production cells is expected to have major impact on Qualitrol’s productivity and new time studies are underway to validate the results.

Transactional Process Improvement (TPI) Kaizen

Qualitrol also conducted TPI Kaizens which are focused on removing waste (muda) and streamlining processes to make them more efficient thus enabling us to exceed our customers expectations. Qualitrol sponsored two events aimed at strengthening our Supply Chain processes to ensure continuity of supply from our internal and external suppliers.

Change is our Way of Life

For Andrew McCauley, Precision Technologies group President, and Qualitrol CEO, the event was truly outstanding and the results achieved during the event will have major impacts across the organization. He thanked everyone for their hard work over the week and for demonstrating great teamwork. He emphasized the importance of sustaining the results achieved during the week.  Using Daily Visual Management and routine sustainment check-ins, the results will be a major success for Qualitrol.

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