CRA Ontario talks continuous improvement

Jan. 22, 2015 – The Ontario Canadian Rental Association had its first meeting of 2015 in Brampton, Ont., hosted by landscaping equipment manufacturer, Vermeer. About 50 attendees gathered in Vermeer's service facility to enjoy a beverage and some networking before heading to the nearby Hilton Garden Inn for a beef and chicken dinner and an educational presentation on Kaizen business practices from Craig Nolan, one of Vermeer's continuous improvement experts.

Listen to this man to just keep getting better and better.

Nolan has been working with Vermeer's dealer network to implement Kaizen and lean processes, so his presentation was quite relevant to the challenges of a typical rental store. He used spaghetti diagrams to show how workers can waste hours simply moving around a poorly organized shop, and pages of scattered numbers to show how much time can be wasted looking for things in cluttered space. One interesting insight was that most companies feel they are doing well if they are increasing sales, staff and inventory – but in fact all they are doing is getting bigger and more complex without actually making any more profit as a percentage of investment. The objective of Kaizen is to extract more profit from the same level of investment by increasing the amount of time employees can spend on value-added activities. Nolan told attendees that Vermeer CEO Mary Andringa is so committed to Kaizen that she makes his training courses available for free to the entire dealer network.

Before dinner, CRA Ontario first vice-president Colin Wilson of A World of Rentals updated members on association activities. Members were given nomination sheets for the Ontario Image Awards, which they had to fill out before they could go get their food. Wilson also discussed plans for the Ontario Conference and Product Expo taking place March 25 in Guelph, Ont., featuring ARA CEO Chris Weyrman as keynote speaker.

For more information
craontario.org