Factory Tour of the Week: Leatherman Pocket Tools

Today we enter the factory of Leatherman pocket tools... many of you probably have one in your pocket now.  Anyone have a spare airplane game you can give them?

Comments

[Emmanuel]

Well, unfortunatly buyers like to waste theyr money, so this company will go on like this for a long time. It's the same in pharmaceutical industries and others.

Just remember Toyota began thinking in HARD times.

[Steve]

"...this company will go on like" what "for a long time"? I saw their Director of HR at the AME Conference in Toronto, and they seem to be doing just fine. Nobody's perfect. I wish my company had as much respect for people in their personnel hiring/development as Letherman does - maybe some day we will. Yes there was some batch processing in the video, but remember that batches are fine if you aren't doing them simply because your changeover times are too long. If you ship boxes of 20 then why not assemble 20 at a time? Sure there are other opportunities like the guy rushing to put knife blades in that spinning part loader. I'll take that any day over the fully-automated fixed process shown in the Audi A3 video. Thank you Leatherman for a great product and a committment to better products in future and best wishes on your lean journey. Thank you also for proving that we CAN manufacture things profitably in the US if we value people and continuously improve.