Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
DVIRC Winning Teams Generates Significant Return on Investment Through Lean Process Improvements Combined with Employee Training for Johnson Matthey
With the help of: Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership
About
Johnson Matthey (JM) is a global manufacturer of specialty precious metals and products for the automotive, aerospace, medical device, and industrial instrumentation markets. The company has 12,000 employees globally and has been a leader in sustainable technologies for over 200 years, applying cutting-edge scientific expertise to create solutions for cleaner air, improved health, and more efficient use of natural resources.
Johnson Matthey’s West Whiteland site in Wayne, Pennsylvania, is dedicated to upskilling their employees, supporting individual and team-based problem-solving, and fostering a continuous improvement culture that encourages all employees to contribute to and achieve business performance goals.
The Challenge
JM’s leadership wanted to create and support a continuous improvement culture that encourages and empowers everybody, every day, to meet a high standard of excellence for the company and the customers they serve. Members of the management team had previously worked with DVIRC, part of the Pennsylvania MEP and the MEP National Network™, with great success, so they turned to DVIRC for help again.
I like that Jeff and I can sit down and cater the program to our needs. It’s not a canned program. It’s based on our own strengths and weaknesses. Being able to create cross functional teams is an important outcome of this partnership. It’s an advanced effort of continuous improvement and we see commercial teams even joining in to help and are able to bring customer perspectives to our solutions.
MEP's Role
DVIRC recommended their proprietary Winning Teams™ program, developed over 25+ years of delivering continuous improvement consulting and training to hundreds of companies. The solution provided JM’s leadership a customized “applied learning” approach to enhance their organizations’ social / team-based problem-solving skills – combining the technical tools and desired behaviors of lean, leadership, coaching, and organizational development.
Winning Teams™ set the foundation for JM’s world-class performance by aligning with their key performance targets. Over the past four years DVIRC worked on-site to train over 50 individuals. Each year, teams of 4-6 employees are assigned a specific value stream – each with its own instructor/ coach, curriculum, objectives, and project charters.
Advanced Manufacturing Lean Master Jeff Kopenitz teaches lean concepts and tools and team-based problem-solving skills, and then coaches teams as they work on actual projects. This enhances the quality of learning, builds deeper capabilities, while generating a healthy return on investment. DVIRC clients gain significant cost savings – minimally 4x over the cost of the program – more importantly, teams continue working on project charters long after the program ends, generating far greater value.