Tuthill
Business System
Our vision at Tuthill Corporation involves the delicate balance
of three "stakeholders", the customer, the employee, and
the shareholder.
We strive to optimize this relationship knowing that if we
focus too much on one point of the "triangle" the others
will suffer and our long-term success will be in jeopardy.
We have five initiatives to help us "balance the triangle":
- Meet Customers' Global Needs
- Build Employee Capabilities
- Pursue Innovative Growth Strategies
- Improve Financial Performance
- Implement Tuthill Business System
These initiatives have been cascaded down throughout Tuthill to ensure
our efforts are focused and aligned to increase our likelihood
of success. The Tuthill Business System (TBS) takes these initiatives
and turns them into actions and results.
TBS is modeled after the Toyota Production System and has been popularly
described as Lean, Kaizen, TQM, etc. We view TBS as a total business
philosophy that instills the discipline but yet the flexibility
to help us prosper.
TBS is not a "big bang", high risk endeavor. It is a "rapid
fire", little steps, approach to improvement. We firmly
believe that a bias for action to gain two steps forward, although
there may be a temporary one step backward, will provide consistent
incremental improvement.
TBS begins by listening to the "voice of the customer"
to determine what they value and remove all waste that hinders the
delivery of that value. Although this sounds simple it is the relentless
pursuit of waste that becomes the challenge. Our leadership
is directly involved to ensure we realize this is not a program,
but a never ending journey that strives for perfection in everything
we do: from the genesis of an idea for a new product to the introduction
of that product; from the receipt of an order to shipment of the related
product; and from delivery of the original unit to follow-up parts
and service.
The fundamentals of TBS are as follows:
- Determine what the customer values and how we create that value
- Deliver that value at the rate the customer wants
- Have the customer pull their requirements versus us pushing
their requirements upon them at our discretion
- Try to produce these requirements in the units the customer
requires, one at a time
- Strive to always close our performance gaps
- Expect problems and relish their resolution knowing that
this makes us stronger
- Respect, recognize, and listen to people --- Through their
success will come ours
Hopefully we have provided some insight to a very important strategic
initiative at Tuthill Corporation. Every line of business is involved
with this process and has shown favorable results. We look
forward to our journey. Although it is not the easy path, we believe
it is the one that will help us "balance the triangle".
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