Want more productivity, higher levels of efficiency, and greater profitability? Automation is one way to get there, but it’s not the only one. You can get there through lean, as well.

What is lean? Lean is a methodology designed to create a culture of continuous improvement, where every employee is encouraged to identify and eliminate waste, leading to increased efficiency, productivity, and a healthier bottom line. Lean was originally developed by Toyota in the 1940s as a method of continuous improvement in manufacturing, but it can be applied to all aspects of a company’s operations.

One of the companies embracing lean is Wise, a manufacturer of business forms and industrial and prime labels to the trade. (Think nobody buys business forms anymore? Check out our article challenging this idea here.) Wise has embraced lean for a number of years. It has seen such success that Bill Prettyman, the company’s CEO, says that lean is no longer just a strategy for the company. It’s the strategy.

Wise has five plants (Georgia, South Carolina, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Indiana) and is known for its short lead times, fast job turnarounds, and incredibly low error rate. It’s also known for its exceptional customer service and personal touch. Recently, Wise has been reaching into the commercial printing market, encouraging printers to consider resale as a way to boost revenues without the need for capital investment.

WhatTheyThink caught up with Bill Prettyman to talk about why his company has made this commitment to lean and the “on the ground” benefits that lean has brought.

WhatTheyThink: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I know you are incredibly committed to lean, and it’s exciting to hear more about what you have been doing. How long have you been involved with lean?

Bill Prettyman: We started in 2006. However, back then, we weren’t using it consistently or strategically. Every once in a while, one of our plants would utilize it as a tool to improve a process or cut costs, but not every plant adopted it to the same extent. Then we hit the recession in 2008 and it kind of fell off the radar.  

WTT: What changed to bring it back to the forefront?

BP: I kept reading about all the gains made by other companies that started with lean and stuck with it. Those gains were impressive, and the more I read, the more it felt like a deeper investment in lean was our next step. We tapped one of our general managers as our director of continuous improvement and driver of lean in our plants. Now, looking back over the past 18 months, we can see the difference between the plants that have fully embraced lean and those that have not. Now we are trying to trying to drive it harder in the rest of the company.

WTT: What benefits, specifically, have you achieved?

BP: In addition to eliminating waste, we have seen faster turnarounds on quotes and increases in productivity that have led to improved lead times. At a time when our competitors had lead times of five to 10 days, for example, one of our plants got their lead times down to three days. Another plant was able to bring its employee turnover down to almost zero.

WTT: We don’t often talk about the relationship between lean and turnover. Can you elaborate?  

BP: At its core, lean is about people. It’s about your team members, and it’s about your customers. As your team members work together, they learn more about your company and its processes. They solve problems. They feel more invested, and they feel that the company is investing in them. That makes them more content and fulfilled in their jobs. This leads to us being a better supplier for our reseller customers, who, in turn, can be better partners to their customers. 

WTT: When you talk about the benefits of lean, it is interesting that you focus more on people than process. 

BP: Creating a lean transformation requires transforming people’s thinking which, in turn, impacts waste and processes. The fact that we focus on people rather than process is such an important point. At Wise, we truly value our team members. That’s why we call them “team members” instead of employees. By involving them in Kaizen events, they know we are listening to their input and value what they have to say. As they see us implement their suggestions, they know we value them. Plus, they see their work environments improve by becoming more organized, safe, and clean.

WTT: Can you talk a little bit more about what lean looks like in practice at Wise?

BP: Lean is based on teamwork through Kaizen events. These are events scheduled around a specific process with the intention to improve it. Say we want to reduce the amount of time it takes to makeready the press. We put together a team, and that team will gather around the press and analyze every step along the way. Is the press operator walking the most efficient path as he or she prepares the press? When replacing consumables, such as ink or paper, where are those consumables stored? Can they be moved closer to the press to save time? The whole team works together to identify inefficiencies and brainstorm solutions. The same process is repeated over and over for different areas of the company: order processing, warehouse management, delivery, and so on.

WTT: Is there a trend in where waste is found?

BP: Definitely—set-up. At one of our recent Kaizen events, the team drew a diagram of every step the operator took (called a spaghetti diagram), then measured those distances and the amount of time it took to complete each step along the way. We found that, for just one press makeready, the operator was walking a quarter of a mile! The next question was, “How do we help improve that process?” Our team came up with ideas, and we created a new SOP. We have found that, on average, you can save 20–30% of set-up time through Kaizen events.

WTT: It’s amazing how much time you can save just by making small improvements here and there.

BP: Absolutely, if it normally takes someone 30 minutes to makeready the press, you can save 5­–10 minutes depending on how efficient the operator is. Now think about how many jobs you run. Say it’s 100 jobs. That’s 12 man hours you just saved.

WTT: Do your team members get concerned that lean will make the company so efficient that they will lose their jobs?

BP: No, they know we do not ever lay anyone off as a result of a gain through lean. If we get more efficient, we’ll reallocate them or do more cross-training.

WTT: You have also described your commitment to lean as a business strategy, not just a process. Can you elaborate? 

BP: The main purpose of lean is to drive out waste. That’s a process. However, when it does that, it lowers costs, lowers lead times, and allows us to provide better customer service. That, in turn, frees up cash that we can invest in the future growth of our business and our people and, in turn, benefit our customers. That’s a strategy.

WTT: Can you give an example of how you’ve seen lean impact your business on a strategic level? 

BP: A great example is the fact that we’ve been able to expand into a new product line, labels. Now that side of the business has been growing so fast that we moved the label plant to grow our square footage from 10,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.

WTT: How do your team members feel about all this?

BP: They really get into it. During Kaizen events, our team members learn more about the business, and as they work together to solve problems, they can tangibly see how they are making a difference. As they do, they become even more engaged. We really only have one asset that appreciates over time, and that’s our people, so we invest a lot in them. 

WTT: Caring seems to be part of the company culture.

BP: It really is. I attribute the happiness of our team members to our managers. Thanks to lean, they have learned how to be more like coaches than managers. They become more focused on helping their teams get better rather than just telling them what to do.

WTT: Think you’ll ever reach a point at which you’re done improving?

BP: (Laughs) Never! Our job is to improve constantly, and lean is our methodology for doing that. Through lean, our main objectives are to deliver increasing value to our customers and continue to help our people grow. That’s something that you can always improve on. Plus, whatever improvements you make, lean has a multiplying effect. I can’t think of any other strategy that has the same impact as lean. 

WTT: As our last question, I want to circle back to one of the main reasons you wanted to talk to us today. That is to encourage commercial printers to consider broadening their product lines by becoming resellers of business forms and industrial labels and tags. Any last comments on that?

BP: Yes, that’s there are still highly profitable pockets of business in those markets that are underserved. Businesses, especially smaller businesses, are buying business forms and labels online because they don’t know where else to go. These businesses are already working with commercial printers for their other printing needs, so printers can expand their businesses by acting as resellers of the right products and often custom products those customers actually need. Plus, once they sell into the account, these types of products are highly repeatable, which makes them more profitable. If a printer hasn't considered expanding their business by acting as a reseller, it’s at least worth having the conversation.