How Lean Manufacturing Transformed Argen's Operations

When I began overseeing manufacturing at Argen back in 2021, I knew we needed to think differently to survive. We had transformed from an alloy-only company to one that offers a highly diversified product portfolio to support our laboratory customers. We had the offerings—from our digitally milled titanium bars to translucent multilayer zirconia—but now was the hard part: How do we manufacture such a broad product suite day-in and day-out, at scale in the least amount of time possible? I needed a formula for success and believed the Lean manufacturing toolset was the answer.

Lean manufacturing is all about eliminating waste and seeking continuous improvement. It’s a process that provides value to the customer as quickly as possible with the fewest resources to meet or exceed their expectations.

As I looked around Argen, I realized we were rife with waste. In our haste to come up with new products, we had settled for high internal failure rates, work-in-progress...