The lean management : an essential and transversal approach in our factories

The “lean management” approach implemented in our factories is fundamental and cross-cutting, and helps to optimise our industrial performance and strengthen our management systems on a daily basis. For the Electronics activity of LACROIX, it is a way of making our processes more streamlined and agile in terms of both production and support activities. Specifically, use of this strategy has enabled us to shorten lead times for the goods manufactured in our factories and to boost our processes, allowing us to meet our customers’ ever-growing Time-to-Market concerns.   

To support us in this process, we rely on a systematization of Kaizen approaches. At all levels, our employees receive training in the methods used so that they can lead the way in future areas for continuous improvement. Being supported through the change is essential for making lean management a pillar of our corporate culture.  

Supported by managers, our teams first carried out “Value Stream Mapping” on our production flows and “Swimlanes” on our support services.These two steps serve to analyse our value chain in order to gain an overview of flows and sources of waste. They enabled the targets, aims and action plans for each improvement area to be established.  

For Symbiose, our  project of electronics factory of the future currently under consideration, our project team has drawn up a transformation plan and set up task forces to prepare for the future with a customer-oriented organisation. The aim is to develop our production processes into self-contained, “One-Piece-Flow” cells with pull system production. Thanks to the LACROIX Daily Meeting performance management system, each member involved in the process is able to contribute so that sources of improvement can be shared across all levels.  

Team involvement and daily management of these improvement areas have enabled us to implement a large number of effective solutions. This approach has vastly increased team involvement and thus strengthened our organization :  

• 241 areas successfully improved in 2021
• Significant reduction of waste and stock  
• Optimized lead times for factory goods: more than 50% of time saving for some products with a significant improvement in customer service  
• Continuous improvement of our industrial performance 
• Enhanced customer satisfaction