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Congratulations to Ray Snyder, CONNSTEP’s Quality
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Systems Specialist, recipient of the 2011 MEP Champion of the Year Award for his dedication to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Connecticut manufacturing community. With CONNSTEP for over 14 years, Ray has provided assistance to Connecticut manufacturers in their quest to obtain and maintain quality registrations. During his tenure, Ray has been personally responsible for managing the certification process of 285 Connecticut companies and for each of these companies, Ray has delivered his trademark “blue banner”– a banner he proudly awards so that they can showcase their new registration to all who drive by!
What helps you keep your continuous improvement strategy on course?
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Strategic Policy deployment helps Electri-Cable Assemblies ensure that our mission critical improvement initiatives stay priority one. As with any business there are always daily interruptions which could potentially sap scarce resources from these key projects. While some issues need to be addressed to ensure that customers are happy, we always need a mechanism to bring us back to what is going to help ECA be a success in the long term. For us it is effective policy deployment. - Paul Murphy, Director of Operations, Electri-Cable Assemblies
Please help us welcome Norman Schaefer to the CONNSTEP team. Norman joined CONNSTEP this summer as the Manager of Business Services where he will be responsible for directing the service areas of Lean, Su Sustainability, and Quality with an increased focus on th the quality of delivered services, strategic business growth, and the development of new products and services. Norman brings a wealth of experience from his time with Gerber Scientific where he served as the Executive Director of New Product Development and as the Executive Director of Gerber Business Systems. There he developed industrial equipment, led the efforts of an enterprise wide Lean transformation and the led the development of a quality management system.
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Management commitment, guidance, momentum and tenacity are not only helpful to stay on course, but necessary to survive in today’s economy. Continuous improvement is not a new concept, but it seems to be a new buzzword. I don’t think any business owner could have been successful in the past, and especially not today, if we weren’t always on top of technology, training our personnel and striving for greater profitability. Mediocrity and success can’t be used in the same sentence and we should all be striving for nothing short of perfection. - Lisa P. Fekete, President, Modern Woodcrafts
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Fostering and sustaining a culture of continuous improvement is fundamental to the viability of any organization. As Dymax continues to gain Lean knowledge, we have come to realize that defining, measuring and improving our value streams is paramount to our success. This improvement cycle propels our ability to differentiate ourselves from our competition while maximizing value through the eyes of the customer. Additionally, this process provides structure for the Lean Steering Committee to drive the organization and planning needs, clarify training requirements and facilitates proper channels of communication. Removing waste from a system is onerous when the value stream is not first clearly identified. - Lance Boynton, Director of Operations, Dymax Corporation
The one thing that keeps our continuous improvement strategy on course is Policy Deployment. Policy Deployment is our overriding tool to ensure all of our employees and projects are focused on achieving our short term, mid range, and long range vision. It is imperative to use continuous improvement tools within each project to ensure we meet our objectives. - Brian Montanari, President, HABCO, Inc.
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Having Continuous Improvement as a key strategy in support of our overall business plan as well as having all management support CI allows the Pegasus team to balance CI with day-to-day tactical activities and therefore keep us on course. - Chris DiPentima, President, Pegasus Manufacturing
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