More than 2000 employees worldwide work at K.O.K. International and contribute to our philosophy of Best Quality. Customer First. Find your next career with a specialized team, in research and development, engineering, production, and more
High quality people make high quality products.
Employee enrichment programs at K.O.K. contribute to our great culture and our high quality products.
Culture has always been important at K.O.K. We know that a great culture stems from holding high standards and encouraging everyone to be the best they can be.
We invest in various employee enrichment initiatives that increase the opportunities for our team by creating systems. These systems enable managerial and production flexibility while increasing efficiency.
Each form of employee enrichment we offer aims to guide employees at all levels toward focusing on how we can continuously improve. Our goals are to:
- Minimize waste
- Increase efficiency
- Increase accountability
- Increase personal utility gained from work
- Increase effectiveness of our process
Enrichment programs focus on Key Performance Indicators, Kaizen, 5S, TPM and Lean practices. As OE suppliers of high quality, mass produced items, these five initiatives are important systems that have proven to push us to the forefront of our field.
Learn more about the initiatives and the ways we measure ourselves and our improvement below.
Total Productive Maintenance
TPM Includes Increasing Production and Quality
At K.O.K. International, TPM means that all equipment is operating at the most effective levels at all times. Our plants are meticulously maintained to ensure this.
The goals of TPM include increasing production and quality and decreasing waste by maintaining plants and equipment. A fully functional machine produces zero-defects more often and allows us to find any discrepancies earlier in the process, leading to less financial, operational consequences, and of course – less waste.
Lead Times Short, Defects to a Minimum, and Costs Down
Identifying the correct KPIs in our manufacturing process and tracking them means identifying and rectifying any deviations from optimal efficiency levels within a very short timeframe. This keeps our lead times short, defects to a minimum and our costs down. Managers and department chiefs are trained under the KPI initiative to benchmark accurately, identify and determine cause for the occurrences of deviations and to remedy deviations from the causal point.
Recording Figures and Reaching Goals
Tracking our key performance indicators (KPIs) and continuously reassessing our benchmarks to account for steady progress are the main activities involved in our KPI system. The functions are to quickly identify any deviations from the norm or any cyclical or long term trends. Department chiefs of customer service, R&D, rubber compounding, metal treatment and all product divisions undertake KPI training so as to create the link between recording figures and reaching goals.
All Employees Contribute
From the board to the employees who work on the factory floors, kaizen is something that is in continuum and has been from the date K.O.K. was established.
Although once performed on a smaller scale, where one man would raise awareness and provide the lean insights on the shop floor, today all employees offer input into ‘kaizen-ing’ sessions.
Kaizen is performed on different levels, and occurs on a very basic level where small adjustments are made to increase efficiency and decrease waste.
Find Better Processes
This is performed regularly within departments, production lines or project teams. Kaizen is also performed on a managerial level where interdepartmental meetings are held to find better processes together that increase productivity, efficiency, and reduce waste between processes.
On a board level, kaizen is discussed in intense problem-solving conferences so that all facets of the enterprise are coordinated as perfectly as possible. To the very core, the focus is on effectiveness and efficiency.
The 5 S’s
The 5 S’s are a fundamental, frequent process with the goal to make our work more efficient and effective, improve safety of everyone, and to reduce waste and defects. Each employee contributes, and the results that are yielded improve all levels of operations.
In our laboratories and factories, everything from machinery down to a single pair of scissors has its own place and cleanliness is imperative. Additionally, all lines of production have a standard process which is followed and continuously validated.
In development and production, 5S is critical to operating safely and efficiently. This is why it was adopted in 1982. The 5 S’s stand for:
SEIRI
Tidiness & Organization
SEIKETSU
Standardization
SEITON
Orderliness
SHITSUKE
Sustaining Discipline
SEISO
Cleanliness
Lean Manufacturing Practices
The philosophy behind lean is increasing customer satisfaction by diminishing waste. On the shop floor, lean practice is facilitated in the physical layouts of our plants and the process flows of manufacturing, supporting increased productivity.
Implementing lean practices in our manufacturing processes improves lead times, reduces rejection rates and increases product quality. It also contributes to reducing the environmental impact of manufacturing.
Quality and Reliability
Our lean practices have been shaped by past problem-solving and genchi genbutsu, which means “real location, real thing.”
To this day, our lean practices complement our other initiatives and we are always challenging ourselves to find even better ways to operate so we can continue competitively offering our customers quality and reliability.