Frans van de Pol is not easily impressed. In fact, you might say that the president of Fokker Aerotron, a LaGrange, Ga., company specializing in maintenance, repair and overhaul of aerospace parts and part of the Fokker Aerospace Group, has been around the block when it comes to the MRO industry -- a block that includes management assignments in the area of aircraft manufacturing, engineering, aircraft conversions and MRO. Still, despite 23 years on the job, he admits to being awed by the results of a process improvement initiative that began shortly before he joined Fokker Aerotron at the end of 2008.

"When I arrived, our on-time delivery performance was unacceptable," says van de Pol. "Today, we've cut our turnaround time by half, and our on-time delivery is up to more than 57%. In fact, I fully expect it to be at world-class performance by the end of the year." 

Needless to say, these drastic improvements in turnaround time and on-time delivery translate to a nearly priceless impact on the company's bottom line.  It's an impact directly attributable to the application of lean process improvement techniques, which comes as no big surprise. No, the surprise is that the lean process improvements were focused not on the shop floor, but rather on the company's administrative processes.

A New Paradigm for Lean Application

"Administrative processes are often a bottleneck -- a huge source of inefficiency and waste, not to mention a hindrance to the revenue-producing components of the business." -- Bill Peterson, faculty member, the University of Tennessee

"I do not have enough words to describe how positive lean is and how huge the benefits are," says Fokker Aerotron Director of Purchasing Stacey Russell-Karr. "At the beginning, even I was skeptical, but now it's a permanent part of everything I do, including my personal life."

Under Russell-Karr's direction and with guidance from the University of Tennessee's Center for Executive Education, Fokker Aerotron has applied lean to six targeted administrative areas and now possesses documented proof that improvements in administrative processes have a direct impact on bottom-line performance. 

For example, after two years of applying lean to administrative processes, Fokker Aerotron's gross profit margins are up by 5%, late delivery penalties have dropped by 93%, warranty repairs have been reduced 50%, work-in-process (WIP) is down 72% and inventory has been pared 39%. Moreover, the company now has excess capacity in facilities and staff, which enables future growth and expansion without additional capital outlay.

"When we started our lean adventure in 2008, we had a lot of processes that existed simply because we had always done them that way," describes Russell-Karr. "When we sought to improve our on-time delivery, we typically looked to the manufacturing end -- how could we push our technicians to turn the wrenches faster?  It had never occurred to us that we could improve the entire operation by improving things in the office. Now, we've proven it several times over."

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