News

“Weir SPM Wins Prestigious Award for Value Stream Mapping Process Improvement”

The Weir Manufacturing Excellence Committee (MEC), consisting of a panel of judges from the Weir Group, judged 40 storyboards submitted by Weir Group business units from March - August 2009 using the marketing criteria of Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery, Development and Management.  A best-of storyboard from each division was chosen then re-submitted to the judging panel to determine the winning storyboard across the entire Group.

In September, Weir SPM was announced as the winner of the award. Their Value Stream Mapping Process Improvement storyboard demonstrated good implementation of Value Stream Analysis achieving safety improvements, reduction of non-value added movement by 94%, reduction of set up time by 42% and improved standardization, promoting 'end-to-end' improvement scope and teamwork. This project took nearly one year to complete beginning September 2008 and ending July 2009. 

Other best divisional storyboards were:

- Weir Minerals: "Volute Liner, Weir Minerals India"

- Weir Power & Industrial: "SMED Balancing - Montreal"

Steve Noon, the Divisional Managing Director for Weir Oil & Gas, stated “Kaizen/VSM mentality is becoming ingrained in our teams and more projects are underway. It’s clear to me that our key customers are interested in this, and it is a differentiator versus our competition.”

The Weir SPM Flow Production Manger, Morgan McCarthy said, “Our success is not the amount of data we have but how our team works together to use the data”. This is a big step for Weir SPM towards building better products in-turn reinforcing our deliverability and reliability to our valued customers.”

Congratulations to all who participated in this project.