Every year, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, or AME, puts together a conference to focus on the latest innovations in the region’s manufacturing industry. This year, Hansen Plastics is proud to be one of roughly 20 companies to lead a facility tour for conference attendees.
The Purpose of the AME
The AME is a non-profit, volunteer-led organization made up of members from across the country who are dedicated to improving the manufacturing industry. Per its website, it is the premier organization for the exchange of knowledge in enterprise excellence, and since its inception in 1985, it has lived up to that goal and then some. The organization now represents well over 4000 members, including both CEOs and middle managers, who strive to improve their own personal performance as well as that of their companies.
Hansen Plastics’ Mission
This year, the AME Chicago International Conference theme is “Leading on the Edge,” which is something that Hansen Plastics does in its facility every single day. The company is 100% employee owned and operated, which means the people working there are especially invested in their own success. Hansen Plastics has broken away from the standard ways of managing and instead moved ahead into a culture that focuses heavily on collaboration, development, advancement, and respect at every single level. This is one of the reasons why Hansen Plastics is one of the several companies viewed as a “good fit” for the AME’s 2019 conference theme.
How Tour Sites are Evaluated
Some of the AME’s volunteers are leading practitioners of continuous improvement. This means that they have what it takes to determine when a company has put methodologies into practice that are designed to improve not only that company’s processes but innovate the entire industry. These volunteers evaluate each potential tour site using criteria set forth by the AME Lean Sensei, and in order to be chosen, there must be prevalent examples of continuous improvement best practices present.
What Hansen Plastics Does
Though Hansen Plastics is honored to be recognized as in innovator and practitioner in lean manufacturing, at the heart of it all, their ultimate mission is to provide their clients with excellent customer service in the injection molding industry. Their clients get to determine what they deem valuable in terms of decoration, assembly, and secondary services, which ensures each client only pays for exactly what they need. Hansen Plastics serves a wide variety of markets, including automotive, appliance, construction, electronics and consumer home products. Their products can be found globally, and at the heart of it all is a group of people determined to ensure long-lasting relationships with clients through the best possible manufacturing practices.
The 2019 AME Chicago International Conference will take place November 4 through November 7 and give attendees plenty of time to tour the facilities that resound most clearly with them. Hansen Plastics is very proud to be among those given the honor of providing a tour, and it is hoped that the information provided during the tour will serve other companies and manufacturing industries well for many years to come.