by Jonathan Pippenger, Senior Associate of Lean Business Consulting Associates

In an article from Stone World Magazine entitled “Unprecedented Growth, Unprecedented Competition”, two concerns were brought forth:

• With so many new companies starting who is regulating the quality and education?
• What happens when companies can’t keep up with production are corners going to get cut?

The major concern of the article is that the craftsmanship of the fabricators remains at a high level.  All it takes is one company producing an inferior product and consumers will begin to bad-mouth the granite fabricating business.  This in turn will send homeowners searching for alternative countertop materials.

So how does this apply to process management?  Lean Six projects are consumer driven and designed to minimize waste and defects.  The benefits of these projects are hard to ignore:

• The insurances that are designed in the project regulate the quality of the process from start to finish and eliminate deviations in production time, making each order easier to calculate an accurate completion date.
• Reduced defects eliminate wasted materials and the lost hours a reworked project takes away from production on the next project.
• Reduced production time and waste increases profit margins and allows for greater opportunity to offer competitive prices with alternative materials.
• Customers that get what they expected, when they expected at a competitive price are happy customers.  Happy customers create referrals.

If all companies are continuously seeking improvement through customer driven projects the quality of craftsmanship will always remain at a high level, cost will remain at a minimum and most important of all, the granite fabricating business will increase its reputation as the superior route to take in home and office decoration.