World Courier's New Hyde Park Station wins the inaugural Continuous Improvement Center of Excellence Initiative of the Year Award
By World Courier
Awarding excellence in continuous improvement.
We are proud to announce that our New Hyde Park Station in the US has been awarded the Continuous Improvement Center of Excellence (CI COE) Initiative of the Year Award. This inaugural award has been given to recognize excellence in applying the continuous improvement methodology, tools, and techniques to business processes. The improvements made across time, cost, and quality demonstrate our commitment to providing a high-quality service to our customers.
Value streams
The working group developed value stream maps for each of the product workflows to identify waste and improve, refine, and standardize the operational processes in New Hyde Park. The initial focus was on how World Courier processes packaging, pickup and delivery of orders in operations and customer service from end-to-end.
The team created better flow in the process by moving workstations, implementing 5S+ at each station, and instituting visual management in the facility. The team updated standard operating procedures and work instructions to standardize the process. The team implemented pull by instituting Kanban in the workflows.
Lean training was provided to all participants impacted in the facility. The training has been enhanced by sending World Courier team members to the AmerisourceBergen Continuous Improvement Basic Course earning the Lean Competency System Level 1a certification.
These efforts have begun making continuous improvement “the way we do work” at New Hyde Park and is the foundation to create the World Courier Way. With the completion of the work at New Hyde Park, the next step is to begin rolling out this initiative to the remaining North American World Courier stations and ultimately to every station worldwide.
The impact
- Improvement to the flow of packaging and implemented the 5S+ approach to reduce waste and optimize productivity as well as tracking the work completed at the site.
- Stepped up efficiencies when assets are returned including GTCs and dry shippers. The team also created a model which optimizes the workflow, in return, maximizing the space to improve our productivity.
- Harnessing the visual management approach to significantly improve and increase workflow and defined lanes to process the incoming and outgoing shipments.
- Defined and implemented new dispatch processes to manage pickups and deliveries and improved the workflow to include visual management during the job activities.
- Eliminated dummy gels in packaging process with significant cost savings and 120 labor hours saved per annum.
- Eliminated two manual checklists saving 320 labor hours per annum.
- Reduced errors in the package check-in process, streamlined return assets process, and eliminated supervisor check by separating packaging and return asset product flows.
- Reduced packaging job issues due to temperature monitor defects by 65%.
- Increased team member engagement and pride.
