Tim Hutzel will never forget the first time, back in 1995, that he walked the shop floor at Hamilton Caster & Manufacturing Co., a maker of industrial wheels, casters, carts and trailers in Hamilton, OH. Hutzel had just left his job as director of lean transformation at GE Aviation to strike out on his own as a consultant and lean guru. Hamilton Caster was his first customer.
“They literally had inventory piled to the ceiling,” recalls Hutzel, who spent some 20 years at GE in positions ranging from shop foreman to quality assurance manager. “It was alarming, once we started putting costs to it.”