Continuous Improvement video

Kohler Industrial Castings is not only dedicated to driving continuous improvement internally but with our customers and vendors as well. Through the use of KOS (Kohler Operating System) and its many tools, we focus on the elimination of all types of waste in our manufacturing and administrative processes. Following the KOS methodology we have improved processes and lowered costs with many of our customers.

KOS - Kohler Operating System
The Kohler Operating System Uses An Integrated Approach To Achieve Strategic Objectives.

Kohler Operating System is how we maximize stakeholder value through efficient business process, linked together to build a flexible, leaner, faster, more customer and consumer-focused enterprise. Serving Kohler like a blueprint, KOS guides the development of an environment that focuses on improving our competitiveness in everything we do. Long term success depends on our competitiveness worldwide.

KOS optimizes the value stream by:

• Customer/Consumer Driven Process Design
• Continuously Reducing Waste
• Associate Ownership

Customers measure our competitiveness in several ways:

• Quality
• Flexibility
• Dependability
• Value

These are not independent variables; they are all interdependent.

This requires us to change the way we think. When we think quality, we must go beyond thinking of it in terms of inspecting or as a cost in terms of the scrap or rework, which must be held to an acceptable level. We need to look at scrap and rework as disruptions to the flow of materials to our customer, and these disruptions must be eliminated.

KOS Tools:

• Six Sigma
• 5S Workshop
• 3P (Production Process Preparation) Workshop
• Business Process Redesign Workshop
• Kaizan