As you could see in the chart from the previous page, Hubbell’s dramatic improvement continued to accelerate in 2004 and their Lean successes were highlighted again in their 2004 Annual Report (PDF 1MB). Here is an excerpt from Tim Powers’ 2004 Letter to Shareholders:
“We exceeded our plans for sales, operating profit, net income, and earnings per share. Our lean manufacturing initiative continued to refine our internal operations for greater efficiency at lower costs. Externally, we’ve begun to extend lean concepts through Hubbell’s supply chain: working with suppliers we’re gaining faster, more frequent deliveries of materials, working with our distribution channel partners, we’re reducing inventories while increasing service.”
In this excerpt, Tim describes the impact of Design for LeanSigma, TBM’s revolutionary process for innovative, lightning-fast product development, a critical element in Hubbell’s growth strategy:
“The accelerating pace of new product introductions – in many cases reducing ‘concept to carton’ time by 50% – is a direct result of the lean manufacturing initiative. Design for LeanSigma (DLS) incorporates value-added features and manufacturing efficiencies at the start while the new product is still an idea. That idea is driven by other lean principles such as Voice of the Customer which delineates customer requirements, and House of Quality which reduces production errors.”