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Sewing Line: Before Lean/After Lean 
Nike so strongly believed that lean practices would position GEX for the future that the company paid for TBM Consulting to assess GEX's operations in March of 2007. The assessment revealed the potential for significant improvement, but GEX's leaders still resisted. Finally, when learning of TBM's unconditional satisfaction guarantee, the founding fathers agreed to test the waters.
The first kaizen event took place at a pilot plant in May 2007. That fall, GEX executives attended a "CEO Boot Camp" hosted by TBM at which they learned of many successful lean implementations outside of heavy industry. This gave another boost to their growing confidence in the new management philosophy, and they granted COO Gaurav Hinduja permission to start a training program to implement lean.
Pilot Makes an Impression
TBM and GEX launched their LeanSigma journey at GEX's Euro Clothing Company (ECC). According to Serena, the implementation went so well, it sparked a raging fire that started spreading throughout the rest of the company. Finally, the company's leaders fully embraced a LeanSigma philosophy. "Initially, we needed to establish a best-piece flow within cellular line designs, to seriously address recurring quality and equipment issues and monitor all output hourly," Serena said of the ECC implementation. Fixing [WIP] levels at key interface points, incorporating packing at the end of a production line and a renewed vigilance to quality assurance allowed us to significantly reduce lead time to the customer, significantly increase 'first-time right' production and improve our on-time delivery to our customers." From January 2008 to March 2009, TBM and GEX expanded the program to four plants, resulting in a total savings of $2 million a year on a one-time investment of $1.2 million. On-time delivery at the plants improved 80 percent to 90 percent, and first-pass yield improved 75 percent to 85 percent. Across the company, productivity shot up 35 percent, and sales grew by two percent in 2008 without adding assets and in spite of a global recession that devastated the retail-clothing sector.
The company plans to expand its LeanSigma approach to 15 plants by March of 2010 (75 percent of capacity) and is expanding kaizen events to business processes as well. Companywide, GEX teams hold an average of 10 kaizen events a week. 
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