Hello Lone Stars!
I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! It’s going by fast. But thanks to our hardworking Sales Team, we are steadily adding to our backlog, and starting to chip away at the Rauland numbers, steadily getting caught up. We’re not where we would like them to be just yet, but many folks are working hard to get us there. Thanks to all our team members, we have yet to incur liquidated damages because a subcontractor couldn’t complete their scope of work due to Lone Star not completing ours. Please continue to be patient and work with our customers as we get past this issue.
But the big news is that we are launching the Lone Star LEAN Initiative, a companywide program to review all types of processes; determine ways to eliminate waste, time, and effort; and implement changes to ensure we are as efficient as possible. We conducted a search for a company to help us navigate the LEAN process and selected Duggan Associates. Over the course of the next several months+, many of you will be working with Robert McAleer, Project Manager for Duggan Associates. He will be helping us examine many processes that will make us a better company within a variety of departments. That is, of course, the short version. All in all, we chose Duggan because their program will help us improve overall efficiencies in Lone Star, but they will also be teaching us the core LEAN methodology so we can continue our LEAN initiative indefinitely. We expect this initiative will happen with little interruption to you and your everyday tasks.
As for Operations, we are making some good progress in all departments toward unifying processes and procedures where we can and where we should. For instance, we have gone back and forth over the need for a formal badge on the nurse call cabinets and what critical information needs to be on them. Then there is the need for Service to do the QC after a project and determine how can we make it easier or better. As most of you know, Central doesn’t have a very big Service department which makes them a little different. We still need to figure out how to implement the QC work procedure into their processes. We are also looking at revamping Bluebeam to be more efficient and useful for all departments. This will not be an easy task, but it will benefit the company to move in this direction. There are some good, difficult conversations happening and it’s exciting to see that we can have heated debates and move on without any hard feelings. That’s the way it should be. At the end of the day, we are ONE TEAM and ONE FAMILY working together towards ONE PURPOSE.
Thanks to all that help keep LONE STAR Moving,
- Victor, COO
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