West's Contract Manufacturing Receives Recognition at Frost & Sullivan Manufacturing Leadership Awards Gala

Earlier this month, West's contract manufacturing team—formerly known as The Tech Group,  officially received its Engineering and Production Technology Leadership award at the Frost & Sullivan Manufacturing Leadership Awards Gala in Carlsbad, California. Winners in this category were honored for embracing new design and production approaches to drive game-changing process improvements.

The award specifically recognizes West's contract manufacturing team's innovative process monitoring strategy, an initiative known as E2: Every Machine, Every Part. This enterprise-wide initiative reviews and improves control processes by integrating a state-of-the-art process monitoring system across 300 molding machines at all seven of West's contract manufacturing facilities throughout North America.

The E2 initiative was launched as a pilot program in 2011 at West's contract manufacturing plant in Michigan. Its Process Excellence department tested manufacturing process discrepancies, including identifying sources of product variation and detecting product defects in real time. West's contract manufacturing team, heavily engaged in Six Sigma training since 2001, was able to leverage its experience in statistics and data collection, which was a critical step in the process. These findings led to new training programs, quality-focused infrastructure improvements and project management initiatives across West’s contract manufacturing facilities. Under the standardized process monitoring approach, it enhanced business processes by reducing manufacturing scrap, correcting up-time for post-injection molding assembly activities, and improving outgoing quality and on-time delivery to satisfy customers’ needs.

Several colleagues were on hand to receive the award in California. They included (as pictured above): Hector Leon, IT Manager; Shari Krusniak, Marketing Manager; Kim Koning, Site Director for West's Contract Manufacturing facility in Michigan; Bill Cowart, Engineering Manager – Process Excellence; and Mark McElfresh, Vice President of Operations, Contract Manufacturing North America.

Congratulations to everyone at West's contract manufacturing facilities for their hard work and dedication that demonstrates West’s commitment to our customers.