Lean production - out of the textbook

Sea Recovery production facility in Carson, California

When visiting Sea Recovery in Carson, Los Angeles where Henrik Wendelboe is CEO I had the pleasure, besides visiting an old friend, of seeing how lean production has been implemented in real life.

This is in particular interesting as my MMT class spend a lot of time last semester studying different production techniques. If not familiar with lean yet you should know that it focuses on the reduction of waste in the value stream by reducing the need for human interaction, space, time, working stock etc.

Lean was defined in the late 80s when the American car manufacturing industry got really worried over the Japanese competition - expressed as cheaper cars, faster development of new models and (much) shorter production time per unit. The research began at MIT and was lead by Jim Womack, Ph.D.

Sea Recovery are water makers - they manufacture freshwater plants from mid-size boats to larger vessels (35-80+ feet / 9-24+ meters). The technique is the well-known reverse osmosis principle - saline water in and fresh water out - the devices are powered by electricity from the boat.

Henrik showing the Aqua Matic water maker

Henrik explained how they transformed the production into a faster and leaner operation.
I was shown then and now pictures of the production and also drawings showing the necessary distance to walk in order to complete one aggregate. And things has become much simpler. I haven't asked for permission to disclose details from what I saw but I am rather sure that you will find similar examples in many text books on lean and your nearest lean consultant might do the same for your production or service.

After some six years of ownership by Danish industrial group Danfoss it was sold off to industrial conglomerate Parker Hannifin in October 2012. Read press release here.

During our conversation Henrik recommended an interesting book "Crossing The Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore which I picked up the day after in the Stanford book store. I expect to understand a bit more of moving all way through the "early adopters" segment to "early majority" on the technology life cycle curve. And reading just a few lines indicates that here might be some food for thought useful in my own industry - telecommunications...


 Order it from Amazon without even leaving the house and read it together with me.