Tour
X Whiting Corporation
Tour Code: WT-08
Day and Time: Bus leaves 9:30 AM, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012
Length Including Travel Time: 5 ½ hours
Optimizing Material and Information Flow to Reduce Lead Times
Lean office and lean production coming together
Whiting Corporation designs, markets and manufactures innovative material handling products in the traveling overhead crane and rail car maintenance equipment markets. During this tour you will see how lean is deployed in this low-volume, high-mix environment to best service a diverse customer base. You will see 1) implementation of lean material systems that support customer demand, 2) cellular manufacturing geared toward one-piece part families, 3) visual workplace, 4) results of office kaizen work on front-end processes and 5) engineering and operations collaboration. For those interested in lean applications in a heavy manufacturing environment, this is a must see tour!X Whiting Corporation
Whiting is privately held by G.K. Enterprises, Inc. Whiting Corporation designs and manufactures traveling overhead cranes and rail car maintenance equipment. On the crane side of the business, customers include nuclear plants, steel mills and automotive stamping applications. Customers on the rail car maintenance side of the business are segmented into light and heavy rail users.John Zellers and Rock Rosati
John Zellers is plant manager and Rock Rosati is safety manager at Whiting Corporation.
Both John and Rock have years of experience with lean implementation, particularly with leaning material flow and reducing work in process (WIP).
No competitors allowed
No cameras or other recording devices
Non-disclosure agreement must be signed


Captain Mark Kelly
Mike Abrashoff
Jason Jennings
Doctor Patricia A. Gabow
Daniel T. Ariens
Once again, the Idea Exchange Café will be open for the interactive sharing of best practices among all participants. There will be six facilitated sessions on a variety of relevant topics taking place over two days. Come for the coffee - stay for the ideas! (read more...)
