Ariens Company a Wisconsin based manufacturer of lawn care and snow removal equipment has been improving their production process for the past 17 years to make the company produce better quality goods while minimizing wasted resources The approach Ariens Company has followed has also enabled the company to improve many of its manufacturing processes while simultaneously reducing waste cycle times and increasing productivity The approach Ariens Company has implemented and continuously works to improve over the years is called lean operations Lean operations consist of four building blocks that are required to achieving lean Ariens specifically focuses on personnel and organizational elements Stevenson Page 616 building block As a part of lean operations Ariens has developed a lean intern program that has been created to not only educate employees but to create leaders that will assist on instilling lean principles into every employee they directly work with The six month program is an intense commitment by the company to ingrain lean processes into their employees that are in a leadership position Of the five elements incorporated within the personnel and organization block treating workers as assets continuous improvement and leadership management are three elements largely focused on by this program This program has invested money time and effort into teaching the Arien Company employees about lean operations and how to properly integrate them into their everyday work life
