Business Operations and Improvement

Kentin

Operations up 60%, downtime down 55%, errors down 40%, schedule adherence at 98% — from 5S, Kanban and a management team that now runs its own improvement cycle.

Service5S implementation IndustryEngineering

Operational improvement

60%

Reduction in errors

40%

Reduction in downtime

55%

Schedule adherence

98%

The challenge

Where they were

Waste had settled into Kentin's operations in the way it usually does — not as one obvious problem, but as a dozen small ones that had become normal. Downtime. Movement that added no value. The same data entered twice. Rework. Non-conformances. An unsafe workplace in places it did not need to be.

Underneath all of it, capable people were being underutilised: staff spent a meaningful share of the day working around the process rather than in it. None of this appears as a line item, which is exactly why it had persisted.

What we did

Worked closely with both management and floor staff — the improvement plan was developed with the people who would have to live inside it
Developed and implemented a process improvement plan built on 5S, applied to the areas carrying the most waste
Introduced Kanban signalling systems so that communication between stages of the process stopped depending on someone remembering to pass it on
Delivered training to embed Lean systems, rather than leaving behind a set of practices nobody owned
Established regular toolbox meetings to build a continuous improvement culture that keeps running after the engagement ends

The outcome

What changed

Operations improved by 60%. Errors fell by 40% and downtime by 55%. Schedule adherence now runs at 98% — which, for an engineering business, is the number customers feel. The improvement was not a one-off clean-up: toolbox meetings and Lean training left Kentin with the habit of finding and removing waste itself.

Measured results