CDE was founded with the dedication to changing the ways businesses handled the acquisition, distribution, and maintenance of their critical point of sale terminals. This spirit of innovation has remained in the company for over 25 years and is still alive today. Part of our most recent efforts to continue improving our processes and making our solutions even more beneficial for our customers is the implementation of lean operations in our business.
What is lean operations?
“Lean” is a method used for eliminating waste within a system. This waste not only includes actual materials, but also overburden, or unnecessary work load. The goal of lean is to add obvious value and production to the process by reducing as much as possible. With the use of lean manufacturing or production, companies have the opportunity to greatly increase their rates and levels of production by minimizing time spent, material used or thrown out, and even the stress put on workers.
CDE is growing quickly and we’re always adding valuable knowledge and expertise to the company by way of great people. One of our newest employees, Jon Harris, was brought to the team as the Director of Operations. With Jon’s years of experience in the field and industry, he was uniquely qualified and prepared to make the most of this role. Jon has done just that.
Over the past few months, the CDE operations team was able to completely re-evaluate the way they were doing their jobs and identify areas where the process may not have been maximizing production. This very critical method of analysis included recording every step each member of the team took in their roles and even the time each step took, down to the second. With this information, the team was able to determine what parts of their process could be eliminated or reduced.
Through the changes to the actual processes and the adjustments to work station location, organization, and flow, CDE’s deployment line is now optimized to handle five to six times more volume. The improvements are even expected to reduce the time for repair and deployment per unit by 40%.
CDE has implemented lean in our warehouse where we not only repair and program point of sale terminals, but also send and receive shipments and manage inventory. This implementation has included a full build out of lean-friendly work stations, and even the reorganization of the inventory.
With the implementation of lean, CDE will not only increase the rate at which they repair and remanufacture units, but also the efficiency of deployment and retrieval services. Instead of having an operations division that is divided into multiple parts, the implementation of lean has more closely joined these processes and, therefore, streamlined the way CDE provides these solutions.
What happens after lean is implemented?
One key part of having a lean organization is the continuous improvement of processes. CDE now has the opportunity to more easily monitor the workflows and make adjustments where necessary, with the new, clean set up. We understand that providing point of sale terminal solutions will continue to be an evolutionary business, which makes lean a perfect fit for the work we do. Now, as we continue to scale and even add to the work we do, adapting the workflow will be much easier.
Like any major change to the operation of a company, the implementation of lean has been a journey with plenty of challenges, both large and small. Jon explained that the flexibility of lean and the opportunity for growth greatly outweighs any challenges the implementation has presented thus far. The CDE team has worked hard on this project, from start to finish, and is greatly anticipating seeing the benefits of lean in action.
