Essay Example on Ariens Company a Wisconsin based

By doing so Ariens seeks to have its employees be able to implement concepts to improve processes quality and overall productivity The investment Ariens has made into its employees is not without purpose It hopes that by investing in its employees it can create lasting worthy assets that contribute to the long term success of the company Going back 17 years ago Ariens Company followed a traditional system of operations When the current CEO of Ariens took control of the company he began by transitioning to a lean system Stevenson Page 629 As the CEO mentioned he followed seven balance points of lean leadership which also correlate with elements of planning a successful lean system transition When transitioning to a lean system Ariens had to ensure that all top management was fully committed to following the transition from beginning to end Without their help and support Ariens would not have been able to successfully complete the transition This idea came in the CEO s point of relentless change During the transition process Ariens had to change out some of the current leadership to guarantee that there was agreement and commitment to the ideas of following a lean system The other crucial element was getting the remainder of the employees under leadership to also cooperate 

One of the benefits of lean systems is to reduce cycle times the amount of time it takes to begin and complete a process Ariens was able to change from batch processing to production line processing which required significantly fewer resources and increased the productivity of the entire operation in a fraction of the time The CEO of Ariens forced employees to be put into an extremely uncomfortable situation when they took a one month process and transformed it into a one hour process These changes also brought along cultural change which has allowed the company to increase in flexibility of production to more accurately meet their customers requirements The company has grown substantially since the implementation of lean because of its ability to be innovative and develop new products to match market demand In conclusion the implementation and integration of lean operations have significantly improved the production process and the business model of Ariens Company The lean approach has allowed the company to reduce waste throughout the company s processes and increased productivity and the quality of their operations in the long term The once solely Wisconsin based manufacturing company has grown domestically and globally as a result of its creation of a flexible manufacturing system made possible with lean operations