Appliances and consumer durables: Lean manufacturing software for appliance and consumer durables plants
LeanSuite connects kaizen, best practices, line balancing and quality across every plant in an appliance or consumer durables network. Whirlpool tackled project visibility and continuous improvement across 14 manufacturing plants with LeanSuite.
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The problem
What slows appliance and consumer durables plants down
Appliance and consumer durables makers often run several plants building similar products on long assembly lines. Here is where that slows them down.
Sharing what works between plants
One plant solves a problem and another is still fighting it months later, because improvements travel by email and slide deck, if at all.
Running kaizen at scale
Hundreds of kaizen events and projects across plants and departments are hard to see in one place. Leaders cannot tell which projects are late, who is overloaded or what the program actually saved.
Line balancing on assembly lines
Mixed-model assembly lines shift with the product mix and demand. Rebalancing with a stopwatch and a spreadsheet is slow, so lines can run out of balance for weeks.
Defects, rework and cost of poor quality
Cosmetic damage, leaks and failed functional tests turn into rework, scrap and warranty cost. Engineers end up working on the loudest problem instead of the most expensive one.
Ideas from a large workforce
Assembly workers see waste every day, but suggestion boxes and spreadsheets leave ideas unanswered, and people stop sharing them.
How LeanSuite helps
How LeanSuite helps appliance and consumer durables plants
Each problem maps to a LeanSuite module you can start with on its own, then connect to the rest.
Sharing what works between plants
In LeanSuite: Best Practice Management turns a local win into an approved, step-by-step standard and pushes it to every relevant site at once. Each team is notified, the new procedure goes straight into their workflow, and a dashboard shows which plants have adopted it.
Running kaizen at scale
In LeanSuite: Kaizen & Projects runs every improvement with A3, DMAIC and PDCA templates, Kanban and Gantt views, and projected and actual savings. Savings can go to Finance for sign-off before a project closes, with hard and soft savings tracked separately and rolled up for leadership.
Line balancing on assembly lines
In LeanSuite: Upload a video of the line and Vision AI produces a Yamazumi chart, a takt comparison and rebalancing recommendations. It balances mixed-model lines by weighting elements by product mix. Vision AI is priced separately from the facility plan.
Defects, rework and cost of poor quality
In LeanSuite: Issue Management logs each defect where it is found. The Quality Matrix puts a cost on it across product lines and processes, and Kaizen & Projects runs the root-cause project and verifies the fix.
Cost of Poor QualityQuality Prioritization MatrixNon-Conformance (NCR)
Ideas from a large workforce
In LeanSuite: Employees submit ideas from the shop floor, a reviewer approves or rejects each one with feedback, and an approved idea launches a Kaizen project. Campaigns, points and a leaderboard keep people taking part.
Customers
Companies that use LeanSuite
Whirlpool case study
How Whirlpool tackled project visibility and continuous improvement across 14 manufacturing plants with LeanSuite.
Its Global Kaizen Power Pitch saw 150 Kaizen presented, $14.8M in hard savings and $17.6M in soft savings.
14
Manufacturing plants
150
Kaizen presented at the Global Kaizen Power Pitch
$14.8M
Hard savings
$17.6M
Soft savings
What getting started looks like
Under a week
Until your first module is live; our team does the setup
$3,000
90-day pilot per facility, credited in full to the annual plan
One flat price per facility
Unlimited users, so adding people does not change the price
99.5%
Monthly uptime commitment in the service agreement
SOC 2 Type 1 audited, hosted on secure cloud infrastructure, with single sign-on through Microsoft Entra ID or Okta and employee-ID sign-in for operators without email. Details on the security page.
Free tools
Related free calculators
Work out the numbers behind these problems. Each calculator shows its formula and a worked example, with no sign-up.
Line balancing calculator
Line efficiency, balance delay and the minimum number of stations from station times and takt.
Open calculatorTakt time calculator
The pace a line must hit to meet customer demand, from shift time, breaks and daily demand.
Open calculatorCost of poor quality (COPQ) calculator
Total COPQ and cost of quality, and each as a share of revenue, from the four quality cost categories.
Open calculatorFirst pass yield (FPY) calculator
First pass yield at each step and rolled throughput yield (RTY) across the whole process.
Open calculator
FAQ
Questions from appliance and consumer durables plants
See LeanSuite across your plant network
Bring the improvement program you want to connect first. We will show you how LeanSuite handles it and what a 90-day pilot would cover.