Lee’s has evaluated performance and optimized as it relates to their entire enterprise. This analysis has led to the development of many non-traditional opportunities for performance optimization and improvement.
As a Purpose Driven Organization we decided to explore how we could make a major positive impact, not only on the environment, but also on the cost or products and services to our customers. These are win/win solutions.
One of our major solutions for 2014 is to transfer our energy strategy from traditional generation to solar. Solar will generate 40% of our energy needs into the future and will reduce our energy costs substantially. This will impact both product cost and our carbon footprint.
This is just one more way that Lee’s is taking responsibility for the future and that of our society in general.
What is QLI? It stands for Quality Leading Indicators. This is a system introduced to us by Eaton, a major customer. They use it to manage their company. Because of our prior performance they had selected us to help them to develop a template and methods for implementing this management system among their supply chain.
Early last year we evaluated the key elements that we thought had led to our success with On Time Delivery and Quality. One of these was in the inclusion of engineering expertise at the quote stage of our manufacturing process.
Our version of AS9100 is what we have called ‘ AS9100+’. We see three levels of implementation of AS9100 used throughout the aerospace community. The first level is compliance only. In this case the firm is doing what they need to do to comply but have not bought into, or accepted AS9100, as the quality approach for their organization.