As manufacturing companies across South Carolina are racing back into normalcy, they are finding that things are not quite the same as prior to the pandemic. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of job openings has reached a series high point (the term…
All the 131 OpExChange member companies are at some stage of their continuous improvement journey. Some have been working on this for multiple decades and some are just getting started. Two things we all have learned through this: 1) The journey never ends. 2) No matter where…
Sleep Number Corporation, manufacturer of the award-winning 360® smart bed, hosted a plant visit for the OpExChange at their Irmo site last week. They shared that value stream mapping (VSM) has become an integral tool in their continuous improvement program. Although there is still room for improvement,…
South Carolina manufacturing companies are finding that Industry 4.0 technology can have immediate financial benefit, and it is not always expensive or difficult to implement. Shaw Industries’ plant in Columbia, S.C. demonstrated this in a recent plant visit from the South Carolina benchmarking group, the OpExChange. Shaw…
In the latest OpExChange event, Sunland Logistics Solutions in Simpsonville not only shared their management system but also provided a hands-on demonstration of their Lean Simulation. Participants from peer OpExChange companies in South Carolina actually participated in the simulation which introduces lean concepts including continuous flow, standard…