Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
— Proverbs 27:17
Last Friday, Micron welcomed 25 professionals from 13 Lean manufacturing companies to tour our shop floor.
This Lean User Group strives to share and learn from its members’ successes in implementing Lean principles — an approach focused on maximizing customer value by continuously improving processes and eliminating waste. This month it was our privilege to host.
Two Systems We Shared
We shared two systems we developed in the spirit of Lean:
1. Our Management Review System:
We built this system to solve a familiar problem: critical management topics were falling through the cracks. What started as a way to meet ISO review requirements evolved into a sophisticated tool that now runs on Lean principles — essentially a just‑in‑time system for management attention.
The system is built around a visual board that lists every key management topic and its required review frequency. Some topics are reviewed weekly; others quarterly. A color‑coded status shows whether each item was completed on time or needed to be rescheduled.
The result was tighter, more purposeful meetings. Knowing every critical topic is addressed when it should be prevents drift. This brought the weekly meeting times from 3-4 hours to 90 minutes or less.
2. Employee Profiles:
If the Management Review System is about tightening focus, this next system is about widening it by getting to know the people we work beside every day.
We started with the Acumax Index, an assessment we’ve used for years as a pre‑employment tool. It gives us a detailed look at a candidate’s needs, decision‑making style, and communication preferences. But we realized its real value came after hiring: helping teams understand how to work better together.
So we asked ourselves: what if we took that insight and made it personal?
We created one‑page employee profiles that combine key Acumax characteristics with details the employee chooses to share — where they’ve lived and worked and outside hobbies.
Paired alongside the Acumax personality profile chart, these profiles serve as both an icebreaker and a communication bridge.
The early results have been encouraging. Conversations that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise are starting to surface.
The feedback and questions from this group showed us that no one can understand you quite like a peer. From laser-focused inquiries about management review throughput to curiosity about the Acumax, the level of insight underpinning the post-presentation questions humbled us.
From Quote Board to Shipping Dock
After presenting, we walked the group through our full value stream — from quoting through engineering, receiving, production, secondary processes, and final logistics. Nothing was roped off or shut down for the sake of the tour. Our visitors saw our day-to-day: the visual management boards, work‑in‑progress levels, routing and identification systems, 5S tool boards, and inventory management systems.
Sharpened by Curiosity
Continuous improvement requires some humility: a willingness to admit, no matter what stage you occupy, that something could be better. That’s true whether you’re a 38‑employee shop like ours or a much larger operation.
The professionals who visited us last Friday embodied that spirit. They came to see what a small manufacturer could teach them — and in doing so, they challenged us to dig deeper into our own systems. There’s something clarifying about explaining your work to peers who truly understand it. When someone asks a pointed question about why you chose a particular approach, you don’t just answer; you re‑examine.
That’s the value of a group like this. We didn’t open our doors to show off. We opened them to learn — and to be sharpened.
We’re grateful to every person who spent their day with us, and we’re already looking forward to the next site visit, where we can see another Lean expert’s systems in action.
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