Cardinal Health Alaris Products, which makes pumps and disposables used during infusions, was in critical shape in the late 1990s and needed to address improvement on all fronts. The prescription included improvements in customer satisfaction and in the company’s finances, which required the company’s leaders to rethink their roles and forced them to create a culture that would encourage everyone to work toward the same goals. The company had to use lean manufacturing principles to yield sustainable improvements quickly by changing its culture and involving each employee. It launched a lean implementation in all five manufacturing sites simultaneously to gain as much benefit as fast as possible.

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