E-Newsletter Sign Up. Stay up-to-date with the latest technology in your area s of interest. Select All Lists. About Us Collins Aerospace is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Local residents had collected 13, dollars to encourage Goodrich to move his plant from New York to Akron.
At this time, no other rubber manufacturers existed west of the Appalachian Mountains. Goodrich hoped to dominate the rubber industry in the Midwest and in the Far West. Goodrich first employed twenty workers. The plant made numerous items but focused on fire hoses that would not burst under pressure. The company, which became known as the B. Goodrich Company, grew slowly during the s, nearly going bankrupt twice, but the business gained momentum during the s and s.
In , an Irish veterinarian invented the pneumatic tire out of rubber. A pneumatic tire is one that is filled with air. It became very popular among bicyclists, providing the rider with a much smoother ride. With the invention of the automobile, demands for tires skyrocketed. The first tires were solid rubber, but the B. Goodrich Company, which had created a research laboratory to discover new uses for rubber in , quickly developed a pneumatic tire suitable for cars.
By , four years after B. Goodrich's death, the company employed four hundred workers and sold more than 1. By , sales exceeded In and , the Riverside plant worked to aggressively implement lean techniques, adapting tools from the Toyota Production System. Efforts expanded as early successes and productivity improvements won increasing commitment from company senior leadership.
Later in , Goodrich Aerostructures began applying lean techniques to administrative processes at the Riverside plant. In , Goodrich Aerostructures moved to improve alignment of its organizational culture, structure, and strategy with its expanding lean operational initiatives through policy deployment.
By , Goodrich Aerostructures was expanding lean implementation efforts throughout many of its U. Since , efforts have focused on continual improvement and "value stream alignment" — structuring the organization around value streams e.
Goodrich Aerostructures managers indicated that the impending crisis of facility closure was a powerful driver for the transition to lean. Significant focus and energy were necessary to implement the "mechanical" aspects of change, including. Company representatives reported, however, that the "cultural" aspects of change, including 1 leadership role, engagement, and behavior, 2 employee engagement, and 3 real time problem resolution, have proven to be most challenging.
As one strategy to address the cultural aspects of change, manufacturing managers and engineers have moved their offices out to the shop floor, improving real time problem resolution. Even with senior management support and commitment, however, changing organizational culture requires substantial effort and powerful drivers.
As part of its lean implementation efforts, Goodrich Aerostructures uses a variety of tools which the company has adapted from the Toyota Production System. Goodrich Aerostructures managers indicated that "policy deployment provides focus, alignment, and linkage. Lean tools provide the means to identify and eliminate waste.
Rapid improvement events serve as a key tool for driving a waste elimination-focused culture change. For example, Goodrich Aerostructures facilities conduct more than kaizen rapid improvement events each year to identify and eliminate waste from particular business and production processes. Goodrich Aerostructures also uses 3P Pre-Production Planning , which focuses on eliminating waste through process and product design.
In these rapid improvement efforts, employee teams are encouraged to move toward the "least waste way.
As the use of lean tools became a mainstream part of facility operations, company Environmental, Health, and Safety EHS personnel have worked to integrate EHS considerations and needs into lean tools and initiatives. For example, EHS objectives must be identified for each kaizen event and recorded on the "scope sheet" for the event. Efforts are also made to involve EHS personnel in events that are likely to have important environmental dimensions, risks, or opportunities.
More recently, Goodrich Aerostructures has begun to use kaizen and other lean techniques to explicitly target EHS issues, expanding the lean definition of " manufacturing wastes " to include environmental wastes and risks.
As another example, a safety kaizen event included having a team identify trip hazards in the plant and mark them with helium balloons to raise employee awareness and to ensure their elimination. Goodrich Aerostructures managers identified an interesting transition at the plants that has moved them away from the use of conventional "return-on-investment" ROI decision-making for determining whether to make operational or capital improvements. Many change projects are now driven by company lean continuous improvement efforts, with attention paid to process flow and linkage, cycle times, and other capital productivity metrics, as driven by Policy Deployment.
An interesting question is "do traditional accounting practices provide a balance sheet rather than a tool to manage a business? As part of its lean focus several Goodrich Aerostructures sites have dramatically changed the manufacturing layout of their facilities. The conversion from a batch and queue mass production layout to a one piece pull, cellular layout generally entails significant movement of equipment.
In this lean approach, production activities are rearranged into cells which link process steps in the order needed to create a continuous, one-piece flow to make the product. Instead of big centralized departments and machines for milling, parts cleaning, painting, and other process steps, small, "right-sized" machines are placed where they are needed in production cells.
In effect, the cellular approach brings the process to the product component, rather than continually moving and storing the product component to take it through process steps. At Goodrich Aerostructures Chula Vista, California facility, several production cells include right-sized painting and degreasing stations. Referred to as "little houses on the prairie," these movable on metal skids , enclosed stations enabled workers to degrease and paint small parts without needing to take them to large, centralized degreasing tanks and paint booths.
This creates substantial improvements in productivity, with ancillary environmental benefits associated with reduced chemical and paint use, waste generation, and air emissions since the equipment is sized to clean and paint the particular components produced in the cell.
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