RITCHIE Team Win Lean Manufacturing Prize

Forfar, Scotland, March - A team of RITCHIE personnel won a Lean Manufacturing prize following a Lean Manufacturing programme run by Xm Services and supported by Scottish Enterprise Tayside. The programme comprised of 9 companies from all over Tayside and was aimed at taking a team through a 7-step change process to solve a business problem with Lean tools.

The Ritchie team, whose members where Alex Thomson, Jim Mearns Andy Reid and John MacAskill, won the prize following a presentation to S.E.T., Xm Services, the other teams and senior management from all the participating companies. The prize was awarded for the team on the programme that demonstrated the most commitment to the ideals of Lean Manufacturing and most likely to drive similar changes within their company.

Lean is a manufacturing philosophy based on the eradication of waste within processes. It is a system that has spread from Japan, where it started in Toyota, and is now seen as a system that can be applied to all types of manufacturing and non-manufacturing environments.

The Ritchie team successfully applied Lean thinking to their Cloos robot cell, which produces agricultural gates and other products, the team achieved a 75% reduction in set-up times which will allow the cell to be more responsive and cut finished goods stock levels.

ABOUT RITCHIE
RITCHIE market handling and storage, and security solutions to the Agricultural, Industrial Gas, Glass, MoD, Utility, Medical, Off-shore and Industrial Sectors.