University tours Crown manufacturing facility

Crown Equipment Corporation, one of the world’s largest material handling companies, shared its lean manufacturing successes and best practices yesterday as part of the Leading Through Excellence summit held by The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business Center for Operational Excellence (COE).

According to its website, the Fisher College of Business Center for Operational Excellence is a consortium of companies that are focused on improving processes in their organization. It connects business leaders and educators driven to achieve competitive advantage through excellent processes across the enterprise by providing member companies with educational development, student projects and access to faculty and networking opportunities. Each April, the consortium holds its three-day Leading Through Excellence summit, which offers keynote speakers, plant tour opportunities and breakout sessions hosted by Fisher College of Business researchers and industry leaders.

As part of the summit, attendees visited two Crown manufacturing facilities, including the company’s New Knoxville, Ohio, facility. The tour showcased Crown’s Lean Management System and demonstrated utilization of the four elements of lean management: leader standard work, visual controls, daily accountability and leader discipline.

“In order to stay true to the title of our event – leading through excellence – we wanted to bring attendees to see Crown Equipment in person,” said Peg Pennington, executive director of COE. “We continue to admire the culture, capabilities and results of Crown’s lean management system and in particular the level of employee engagement the company achieves. It’s a great model for other companies to follow.”

Kim Leopold, operational excellence manager, Crown Equipment, said, “We always enjoy sharing our best practices we’ve garnered on our lean journey. This event provided a valuable opportunity for us to show how we use lean tools to engage employees to help improve business metrics, processes and sustainability efforts in ways that benefit our customers.”