In early spring of this year, volume started coming in pretty steady - especially in Next Dimension vinyl and doors. Pinnacle product soon followed. This has kept us pretty busy through this year.
During this time our continuous improvement projects were fewer and fewer. Moving forward into 2013, our continuous improvement efforts will be ongoing while ramping up in activity every month.
All new employees go through quality training, and in 2013 we will also start educating new employees on continuous improvement and other process flow activities. This is a critical component to building an initial foundation in our culture of continuous improvement. Success in this area leads to great products and increased business.
Customer feedback is key to continuous improvement and we encourage it. This information is incredibly valuable as we form teams to not only improve our many processes but also to improve our product.
This doesn’t stop once we have refined a problem/process, however. We need to continually push for that "future state," with incremental changes and improvements along the way.