Last week, Greenville hosted over 110 participants from around the world for CEO Kaizen Week, one of the most important weeks of the year for GE Vernova.
Together, they worked to brainstorm, learn, and develop ways to accelerate business performance as measured by Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost.
The seven teams worked across shop floors and conference rooms to improve a wide variety of processes including:
- Medium & Large Part Delivery to Turbine Assembly
- Metallurgical Laboratory Capacity Alignment
- Nozzle Line 1 No-Lift
- Turbine Assembly Rigging Kitting
- Greenville Manufacturing Leadership Skills Development
- Pilot Group Process Qualification
- Standard Work for Heavy Metals (Pb, As, CrVI)
Continuous Improvement in Action
The safety and productivity potential on the Medium & Large Part Delivery to Turbine Assembly team was astounding. The team is already seeing benefits around 5S and safety within the workstation and that’s just the beginning. They are also seeing the possibilities around reducing the lead time and therefore increasing the capacity of turbine assembly. This one is a game changer (in Lean terms we would call this a “kaikaku”).
Additionally, waste is being removed from Turbine Assembly by kitting the rigging. Not only are we making the lifts that we have yet to kaizen-out safer, but we are removing the time that operator take to hunt for lifting components.
“The key takeaway for me was the utmost respect for all of our operators,” said Chuck Wilpers, Gas Power Business Operations. “We wanted to keep them out of the Line of Fire and at center of our waste elimination target.”
The Nozzle Line 1 No-Lift team also demonstrated what a motivated kaizen team can execute. The team created a system that will make the lives of the operators much easier by removing 18 lifts from the process and eliminating the use of a crane to load and unload the machines. This reduces the time that the operator needed to load and unload the machines from 12 minutes down to 2 minutes.
Strategic Imperatives Driving Us Forward
Throughout Kaizen week, all teams supported Lean roadmaps and to drive improvements that directly align with GE Vernova’s five Strategic Imperatives.
“The biggest challenge of CEO Kaizen Week for me is to try keep up with the amount of transformation that the teams are motivated to make. I’m making sure they have all of the correct tools, supplies, and coaching they need to be successful,” said Mark Kromer, Senior Manufacturing Staff Manager. “Our capacity for positive change is amazing when we all get together and work as a focused team.”
