Westfield Embraces Lean

Westfield produced its first car - a replica of the 1956 Lotus XI Le Mans racer - back in 1982. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, the company is driving forward a lean manufacturing led programme of change. The programme began earlier this year with a consultant-run workshop on using the 5S principles in the workplace. Westfield managing director Julian Turner explained: “Following our acquisition of the business, it quickly became clear that we needed to improve quality and then efficiency. In order for us to do that, we had to look at the business differently – effectively to ‘think outside the box’ and evaluate how we go about our daily work.” The workshops, he said, allowed the company to look at many different facets of the business – “right down to the little things that you would not normally take a second glance at” – and heralded big changes in the way that the assembly area was run. “To start with, we adopted the changes that were recommended in half of the production cells so that their effect could be measured against the existing methods,” said production manager Adrian Halford. “It soon became apparent that we needed to roll-out the changes to the remaining cells as they were lagging behind. We have been so impressed by the difference that using the 5s’ principles has made to our production, that we are now implementing it across all other areas of our business – we’re even going to train our suppliers.” Greg Simpson – a co-founder of the consultancy Bubblequest, which provided the workshops its FirstLine software package to help co-ordinate and manage the new techniques – said: “Companies everywhere know that lean manufacturing techniques can radically improve their bottom line performance. The problem is that up until now there has been the lack of a coordinated monitoring system to assist with the implementation of the programme.”