Feature Article
Continuous Improvement in Investment Casting Deb Pipoly, President of Eagle Precision Cast Parts
company’s processes that improve efficiency and quality. While the concept is fairly simple, many businesses find it challenging to sustain continuous improvement over the long term. Continuous improvement is one facet of lean manufacturing, which is a set of tools used to maximize output and minimize waste. The meaning of ‘minimizing waste’ in manufacturing is a far-reaching term. Some examples include: • Unused material reclamation and recycling
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• Cutting down on energy and transportation costs
• Reducing wait times • Minimizing product defects and returns
The practice of identifying waste in a production process is an essential part of lean manufacturing. Continuous improvement in the context of lean manufacturing rests on the notion of producing the highest quality product for the lowest absolute cost through a series of incremental
26 ❘ November 2024 ® ontinuous improvement is
an ongoing effort to make incremental changes in a
changes to the production process. In this article, we’ll be looking at
what continuous improvement means in practice across various industries, with a special emphasis on what it means for manufacturers, and how Eagle Precision Cast Parts utilizes the principles of continuous improvement in our lean manufacturing journey.
Continuous Improvement in Practice While continually striving to improve process efficiency and product quality is exactly the type of thinking that we hope to master in the manufacturing world, manufacturing is not the only industry that leverages continuous improvement.
continuous
In healthcare, for example, improvement
strategies
can help hospitals identify bottlenecks in surgery scheduling that result in suboptimal operating room utilization. Consequently, this reduces the wait time between two patient’s surgeries and ensures as many people receive treatment is as little time as possible. Another industry where continuous
improvement is very active is in the retail banking space. Technological and programmatic updates in the industry,
as well as the rollout of fraud detection technologies, have significantly reduced the number of customers falling victim to fraudulent activity. In this case, there is a very obvious interest between all parties involved to reduce ‘waste’ because here ‘waste’ equates to actual dollars. Even major retail chains like Wal- and
Mart Target build continuous
improvement into their core business strategies. Both companies actively seek opportunities to leverage technology and data to optimize processes, manage inventory and increase customer retention. In all cases, data plays a significant role in guiding the decisions made by leadership.
Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing
Manufacturing has a particularly strong relationship with continuous improvement. In fact, manufacturing is where the whole idea originated and where it continues in its fullest form. In earlier time periods where the manufacture
physical of goods was
really the only kind of industry outside of agriculture, some of the first factories began the practice of constantly looking
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