By: Davies Hood, Induron President
For many of us, the New Year provides a natural time to review what is working in our lives and what is not working. It gives businesses like Induron the same opportunity to reflect. Too many of us get caught up in the hustle and bustle of establishing goals and New Year’s resolutions that we forget to reflect on the good things going on. Continue reading Reflecting on 2016
By John Anspach, VP of Operations
You’ve heard us talk about “cycle count.” This number is a tool used to gauge how efficient and consistent we are when making paint.
Each time a batch is made, technicians perform a battery of tests to ensure it matches the formula and meets qualifications for viscosity, solids and flow. If it’s just right the first time, the cycle count is zero. If something is even a tiny bit off, the batch goes back to our technicians and is adjusted. Testing is then repeated until the paint matches the qualifications exactly. Continue reading Why Cycle Count Matters and Why We Share Ours
David D. Hood, President, Induron Coatings
“Zero Defects!” So proclaimed a huge sign over the entrance to Lockheed Martin‘s production facility in Marietta, GA. It was 1966, and I was a newly minted junior engineer doing structural analysis on the forward bulkhead of the C-5A Galaxy. It seemed pretty obvious that defects in manufacturing an aircraft capable of lifting 800,000 pounds into the air were not well tolerated. Continue reading Striving for Zero Defects
By Davies Hood, Induron President
Our Core Values here at Induron are Integrity, Respect, RELIABILTY and Innovation. I was reminded of the least referenced one of these while reading this article in “Chemical Processing.”
As industrial paint manufacturers, we are considered part of the chemical industry, not only by ourselves, but also by the U.S. government. This article begins with the statement, “Reliability improvement remains imperative for chemical makers,” and mentions two of our biggest suppliers – Air Products and Chemicals and Dow Chemicals.
At Induron, we regularly report our Cycle Count (read more about Cycle Count here), which is an internal measure of doing things correctly time after time. More accurately put, it’s a measure of reliability. We consistently score in the 0.15 – 0.25 range (the lower the better), which by all accounts is an industry outlier.
This article talks about how Air Products and Dow have both taken an inward-looking metric and turned it inside out. This places their focus more on their customers than just their internal processes, and puts reliability at the forefront.
Two comments by Wilbur Mok, Air Products vice president of North American tonnage gases, that I particularly appreciated are, “We took the best operating practices and shared them globally. So now we operate each plant the same way.” This led to Air Products “freeing up site teams to spend more time on higher value tasks, such as preventative maintenance, improvement projects and troubleshooting.” Continue reading Impacting Reliability
Last week, I spoke about the importance of cycle count in terms of efficiency. Our numbers are consistently low, and that’s something we are especially proud of around here.
The final numbers are in, and I can say that annually, our cycle count has been at .25 or less since 2007. That’s 5 years running. So how did we get and keep our numbers so low?
I can sum it up in one word: communication.
Our paint is made great by three teams: Paint Makers in our production department, the technical folks in the lab and quality control. Internally, these departments have a genuine respect for each other’s work. They have trusted relationships that allow for feedback. Continue reading What Cycle Count Says About Teamwork
You’ve heard us talk about “cycle count.” This number is a tool to gauge how efficient and consistent you are when making paint.
Each time a batch is made, technicians perform a battery of tests to ensure it matches the formula and meets qualifications for viscosity, solids and flow. If it’s just right the first time, the cycle count is zero. If something is even a tiny bit off, the batch goes back to technicians and is adjusted. Testing is then repeated until the paint matches the qualifications exactly.
Each adjustment adds a number to the count. One adjustment equals a cycle count of 1, and so on. We take the average number of adjustments to get our cycle count. You can see why you would want to keep this number low: Continue reading Why Cycle Count Matters in Paint Production
Our Cycle Count for January 2012 was 0.17. This is a great start to the new year, and shows our employees are ready to tackle 2012 with exceptional accuracy. Can we go lower in February? We’ll find out soon!
What is Cycle Count?
Each month, we do an internal report called “Cycle Count,” to summarize all our “Production corrections” in one number. Cycle count is a direct measure of how well we perform at “doing it right the first time, every time.” Continue reading First Cycle Count of 2012
Our Cycle Count for December 2011 was 0.21. This is a great number, but even better are our 4th quarter and year-end cycle counts – 0.17 and 0.19, respectively!
We met all of our Quality Goals in the 4th quarter of 2011 – it was our best quarter and year-to-date ever! Congratulations Induron Operations Team!
What is Cycle Count? Continue reading December and Year-End Cycle Counts
Our Cycle Count for October was an impressive 0.17 – our lowest ever! Thanks to our amazing employees for a great month!
What is Cycle Count?
Each month, we do an internal report called “Cycle Count,” to summarize all our “Production corrections” in one number. Continue reading October Cycle Count
By David Hood, Induron President
“Zero Defects!” So proclaimed a huge sign over the entrance to Lockheed- Martin’s production facility in Marietta, Ga. It was 1966, and I was a newly minted junior engineer doing structural analysis on the forward bulkhead of the C-5A Galaxy. It seemed pretty obvious that defects in manufacturing an aircraft capable of lifting 800,000 pounds into the air were not well tolerated. Continue reading Zero Defects!
