On any given day, you can find members of the Continuous Improvement team at Gentex collaborating with different departments and production lines across the Company to find the best way to complete work. They are familiar with breaking down product assembly and manufacturing processes so employees can easily execute their tasks.
While they don’t usually work with clothing donations or school lunches, the team has found ways to apply their skills to help two West Michigan nonprofits: Community Action House and Kids Food Basket.
When members of the team volunteered at Community Action House, helping to sort through donated goods, they saw an opportunity to apply their Continuous Improvement principles to the work volunteers were doing at the local nonprofit’s resale shop.
“Taking the donations in can be a bit erratic,” said Steve Burgett, Continuous Improvement Engineer at Gentex and CAH volunteer. “Community Action House had benchmarks for how quickly they should be taking donations in and listing them for sale. They were at 60% of that rate.”
Volunteers of all experience levels would be engaged in every step, from bringing in the items and sorting clothes to looking up pricing and condition benchmarks for the items.
Seeing room for a smoother process, the Gentex volunteers utilized work balance tools to create a simpler workflow for volunteers. They mapped out the current process, identified steps that had the highest difficulty and duration, and then creatively rearranged the work steps to align with volunteer experience levels.
The team also worked with Community Action House to experiment with workspace layouts. The new environment helped eliminate legwork and moved items more quickly from the donation drop off to the sales floor.
The result was a streamlined donation process where each volunteer could contribute most effectively. “Now, one-time volunteers can perform steps that take 5 minutes to learn,” said Jordan Kimble, Senior Continuous Improvement Manager. “Experienced volunteers or staff use their prior knowledge to quickly price each item to get it to the sales floor.”
“What our team and I are most excited about is that Steve and his team were able to help develop the process in which our team manages volunteer groups of various sizes, said James Smead, Director of Resale Operations at Community Action House. “That has been a game changer for us and has helped double the output of every volunteer group that has come through our store.”
This wasn’t the first time the Continuous Improvement team applied their knowledge in a different space. Around 2020, they worked with Kids’ Food Basket in Grand Rapids to develop a smooth process for moving food and lunches in the space. Soon after, a new Gentex partnership with the new Kids’ Food Basket location in Holland was announced. “That location only had folding tables to assemble lunches,” said Kimble. “You couldn’t move product in and out of the space in a way that was ergonomic—things were sliding all over the place.”
With support from Steve Downing, President and CEO of Gentex, the Continuous Improvement team partnered with the Gentex Tool Room team to design and custom-build workstations for preparing lunches at both locations. The Gentex Facilities team organized transportation and installation of the workstations, which are in use to this day.
“That kickstarted us finding opportunities where we can use our skills and tools from Gentex and apply them to share with our community partners,” he continued.
Both Kids Food Basket and Community Action House have utilized the contributions from the Continuous Improvement Team as the nonprofits have opened new locations to help serve the community. Community Action House will open another resale store in the spring with workflows based on feedback from the Continuous Improvement team, and Kids’ Food Basket continues to benefit from the ergonomic workstations and workflow designed by the CI team.
“It is absolutely amazing for local businesses with specific skill sets and abilities to be able to share expertise to local nonprofits like Community Action House,” said Smead.
“This partnership and the knowledge shared by the team at Gentex has helped our organization continue to increase the revenue we are able to put back into the community,” he continued.
For the Continuous Improvement employees, seeing the results of their work at local organizations adds a new dimension to their career, and their volunteer efforts.
“Often in industry, Continuous Improvement toolsets are another way to improve the process, and also develop people to be problem solvers and creative thinkers,” said Kimble. “You can apply our tools to not just building parts, but also these volunteer organizations where you’re processing goods or putting together lunches. So it’s cool to do that out in the community and see it impact differently than just our usual volunteering.”