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Lean Training Results in Cost Savings

With the help of: Impact Dakota

About

Founded in 1962, Väderstad is a Swedish family-owned company. The main part of their manufacturing takes place in the small town of Väderstad, Sweden, but they have a presence on all continents. In May 2021, Väderstad bought 100% of AGCO-Amity JV LLC (AAJV), a North Dakota-based company that manufactured, designed, and supported the Will-Rich, Wishek, and Concord product brands with 270 dealers worldwide, most of them in the US. AAJV was fully integrated into Väderstad’s growing global group of companies under the company name Vaderstad Inc. Their products/specialties include tillage, seeding, planting and high-strength parts.

The Challenge

Vaderstad needed lean thinking and training for staff at the newly-acquired Wahpeton location. The company turned to Impact Dakota, part of the MEP National Network™, for help.

Impact Dakota has provided our team the tools and knowledge to successfully integrate lean ideas into our business!

— Josefine Hedborg, Production Manager - Visual Efficient Flow

MEP's Role

Impact Dakota provided a no-cost Lean and Business Excellence Assessment to provide Vaderstad with a lean implementation road map and areas to implement improvements. As a result, Vaderstad engaged in training 24 employees in a one-day Lean 101 and two employees in a six-day Lean Enterprise High Performance Manufacturing training course. These trained employees held several kaizens around the factory, including a crate cost reduction and final assembly area flow events.

The purpose of the final assembly area flow event purpose was to train the team and establish a 5S+ program over two days with six hours per day to focus on the setup. The first day started with a refresher on lean principles, 5S+, value-added and non-value-added work, visualization and efficiency flow principles. A set-up of kaizen event scope with objectives, principles and rules was also held. After the gemba walk, a walkthrough to observe employees, ask about tasks, and identify possible productivity gains, the team produced over 60 problems, issues and opportunities (PIOs)-- over 6 issues per person and double the PIOs for traditional events.

The crate cost reduction event helped to reduce production material in the service parts area. A cross-functional team was set up to brainstorm ideas based on waste reductions concepts "DOWNTIME" and 5S+ setup. A two-day lean workshop was held.

Created January 17, 2025