Labomar:
Why be a Lean Lifestyle Company

“At the beginning I had a clear vision and the point of arrival, but it was not immediately easy to bring all the people in the company on board. Today, four years later, the change I wanted has happened: people are proactive, helpful and empowered. The proof? When we started the stock exchange listing process, the investors, after looking at the numbers, went down to the production floor and breathed in the enthusiasm, serenity and smiles. They saw the value of the Lean Lifestyle. They saw in the gestures and words of my collaborators that Labomar is truly a company made up of people. A goal that we defined back in 2017, together with a roadmap that led us to develop vision and foresight, focus on value, agility and simplification, as well as the development of human potential and the physical and mental well-being of our people.”
Walter Bertin - Ceo Labomar

 
 

Labomar is a company based in Istrana that for twenty years, under the guidance of its founder Walter Bertin, has been offering its customers solutions in the field of food supplements, medical devices, cosmetics, and foods for special and functional medical purposes.

Starting from 2017, Labomar has decided to evolve its way of working, not only by adopting Lean managerial tools and practices, but also by orienting the entire organization towards a Lean Lifestyle Company transformation. More well-being and more results, without compromise. Thus, in the difficult year 2020, Labomar has kept the bar straight and, also thanks to the work done in a Lean Lifestyle perspective and its training to ride the changes, it has recorded a robust increase in turnover (+26.3%). The change process was structured with a multi-year program started with Hoshin Kanri and the establishment of cross-functional committees, and continued with several fundamental steps. In particular, roles and responsibilities were revisited to support a culture of delegation and continuous growth of employees; cross-functional figures were identified and specially trained with the aim of finding process waste and working to remove it, always pursuing maximum value for the customer. A broad training plan was launched starting from the first and second managerial lines, with progressive extension to the other company operational figures, to develop skills in the thematic areas covered by the project.

The company has also invested heavily in increasing people's energy by providing employees with a gym and personal trainers who observe people at work to help them maintain correct posture.

In addition, the product development process was revised, obtaining a 50% reduction in the first response lead time (concept) and a potential 100% increase in the conversion rate; of the supply chain and the production process with improvement actions such as quick setup to reduce the inactive hours of the machines during the various types of setup (batch change/format change/product change), the quick reaction meeting to reduce waste and rework and the daily meeting to establish the priorities of the day and define the countermeasures to the critical issues in progress; visual management to give real-time visibility of the deviations between actual and planned production by reporting the causes and related countermeasures.