Creating a Culture of Learning through the Spirit of Improvement

In the fall of 2006, Valley Grinding made a promise to itself and its customers to improve the services we offer and solidify the quality of the products we manufacture by committing to a path that has and will continue to lead us on exciting and challenging journey known as continuous improvement.

As our journey moves into 2008, we have already made significant progress and continue to work diligently to incorporate positive changes to our internal processes. As we continue to analyze ourselves, we increasingly become more and more aware that we still have many tactical improvements we can make to our processes; however, we have also come to appreciate the fact that these processes are executed by people. So beyond all the steps that we have and will continue to put into place to ensure operational excellence, we know that there can still be one vital missing link to making high performance happen: A strong spirit of improvement, shared by employees throughout the organization!

As we see it, a spirit of improvement manifests itself in three important ways. First, it occurs when the great majority of an organization’s employees visually recognize both the need for, and the importance of, improvements. Secondly, it requires that employees have the motivation to act in support of necessary changes. Lastly, the organization itself must demonstrate that it has the energy and resources to carry out and follow through on improvement initiatives. At the root of this spirit is a learning organization that is populated with individuals who are constantly learning the right ideas that serve the customers’ needs.

Valley Grinding & Manufacturing understands that our competitive advantage and ultimate success relies on having a deeply knowledgeable workforce that is driven by a thirst for understanding. That’s why we have made a commitment to learn, integrate, and infuse the most practical practices of the Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma movements into our everyday operations as well as ensuring that our workforce culture embraces the spirit of improvement as we travel along our continuous improvement journey.

For more information on VG's Continuous Improvement Program give us a call at 800.950.7675