Smith-Midland Partners with Local College to Make Employees “Partners in Success”
MIDLAND, Va. – Smith-Midland Corporation is looking within its own community to help it become a better, bigger, stronger and more profitable company. As they implement a lean approach to the process of manufacturing precast concrete, they are looking to their employees to take the initiative to address and correct problems they encounter throughout the manufacturing process. To be successful in this new approach, Smith-Midland turned to the Lord Fairfax Community College customized training program to help empower their employees to become their “partners in success.”
According to Chris Kemp, Director of Continuous Improvement for Smith-Midland, the company is undergoing what can best be described as a “lean” transformation. “The transformation will focus on the three main factors that production managers fear most: poor quality, increase in production costs, and an increase in lead time. It will be a shift from the traditional manufacturing system to a model that emulates the Toyota Production System.”