Learning Tours Archives

24May 2024 by Jennifer Ayers

Benchmarking Tour: A-dec – June 12 (FULL)

Tour Focus: Lean Principles in Practice Host Company – A-dec website A-dec designs and manufactures dental equipment at their headquarters in Newberg, Oregon. The A-dec vision began with a simple idea: make the best better. From their simple beginnings, A-dec has emerged as one of the most respected names in the dental industry. In 1964, founders Ken and Joan Austin made the biggest choice of their lives: risk it all to start a company of their own. Little did they know that an invention and a dream would help revolutionize the world of dentistry. 60 years later, A-dec is an employer of choice and the world’s leading manufacturer of reliable dental operatory equipment. They continue to work for the betterment of dentistry and embed their values into the work they…

07May 2024 by Jennifer Ayers

Benchmarking Tour: WCT – May 16 (FULL)

Events, Learning Tours

Host Company – World Class Technology (WCT) website World Class Technology (WCT), located in McMinnville, OR has quickly become a global leader in the latest Metal Injection Molding techniques. Years of refining techniques have created uncompromising quality, high yields, and cost efficiency. WCT's state of the art equipment includes CAD/CAM design, CNC, EDM, Metal Injection Molding (MIM), Sintering and Coining. Our first exposure to CI was in 2019 when we invited Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership to come in and help with a backlog problem in one of our production lines which resulted in a huge success. Since then, CI has been one of our main focuses for identifying Value Added and Non-Value Added steps in our production process. We’re still new to this CI mindset and still learning every day to…

19Mar 2024 by Jennifer Ayers

Benchmarking Tour: Ichor Systems – April 25th (FULL)

Events, Learning Tours

Host Company – Ichor Systems (website link) Ichor is the leader in the design, engineering and manufacturing of critical fluid delivery subsystems and components for semiconductor capital equipment. Our products include the gas and chemical delivery subsystems that are key elements in the process tools used for commercial semiconductor device manufacturing. At our Tualatin, Oregon facility, our key processes include plastic fabrication for chemical delivery systems and stainless fabrications for gas delivery systems. Tour Summary Our goal as we began re-energizing our CI program a few years ago was a strong focus on sustaining improvement and employee engagement. As we moved forward implementing 5S, visual management, and standard work, we wanted to ensure continuous improvement efforts were ongoing, recognized, and shared among all our sites. One of the key management practices…

09Nov 2023 by Jennifer Ayers

Benchmark Tour: Danner Boots – Nov 30th (FULL)

Learning Tours

Host Company - Danner Boots/LaCrosse Footwear For nearly a century, Danner has crafted boots with purpose and integrity - footwear to equip those who choose the unlikely path, those who cut fresh trails, those who pioneer. To this day, our commitment to superior craftsmanship remains unchanged. We continue to craft high quality boots, using the best possible materials we can find, to create a product built to last. In our Portland manufacturing facility, we have blended superior handcraftsmanship with innovative new technologies such as automation and real time metrics tracking to ensure we stay competitive both domestically and internationally. Tour Summary: Danner is known in the industry for their high quality, rugged footwear. To consistently deliver a top-notch product, we invest significant time and effort into establishing robust quality systems. These…

15Aug 2023 by Jennifer Ayers

Virtual Tour: Kaas Tailored – Sept 11-14th

Application~, Developing People~, Leadership~, Learning Tours

Who is “Kaas Tailored”? We are a manufacturing facility located in Mukilteo, Washington. We want our workplace to be one of joy and learning, which is why we are committed to developing people through a culture of Continuous Improvement. To fund these efforts, we produce high-quality upholstered goods and provide design services to like-minded customers. What can be learned on the virtual tour? We want to help you answer the question, "Why should I bother learning about this?" Our method includes conversations with a variety of Kaas team members, in-depth training on the 7 wastes, and an intro to the improvement tools we use. You will experience team train, team clean, visual management tools, and Kaizen problem-solving. The day ends with 30 minutes of Q & A with Kaas leadership.…

14Aug 2023 by Jennifer Ayers

CI Open House – Sept 14th

Learning Tours

A-dec is holding their 6th annual CI Open House on Sept 14th. This event was launched as an opportunity for people to share the fun things they are doing, be recognized for their hard work, and inspire others to action. Think of this as a high school science fair with a focus on process improvement. Teams/individuals will have booths set up with tri-fold displays and will share a 3-4 minute presentation about their implemented improvement. This is such a cool event and something I always look forward to attending. Kelly has graciously invited a small group of people from NWHPEC to the event on the 14th. We will start out with a brief intro about the history of the Open House and their CI Journey. We will then “tour” the…

24Apr 2023 by Jennifer Ayers

Benchmarking Tour: Warne Scope Mounts – Cobots – May 10th (Full)

Application~, Developing People~, Learning Tours

Our integrated factory – utilizing cobots to stabilize our work and workforce Tour Summary While getting a view of the overall manufacturing process for Warne’s product, scope mounts, you’ll learn how they overcame the challenge of labor shortages and found a win-win solution that helped improve employee utilization and skillsets through the implementation of cobots.. Workers are now able to shift from repetitive tasks to creative, solution-oriented tasks. This created a new form of collaboration among their workforce. Join us to learn the challenge they were facing, the solutions they considered, and how they successfully integrated cobots into their manufacturing processes. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn more about cobots from their automation supplier, Olympus Controls (a NWHPEC member). Intended audience: Manufacturing Engineers, Manufacturing Managers, and others who are wanting to…

Category: Learning Tours