"AGILEAN showed us how to reduce our average time to
respond to a customer request for quote from 1 week to 3 days,
while reducing costs by 20%."

Michael Burke, President, Spectralux

Spectralux Customer Testimonial

Lean Office

The following Lean Office testimonial was provided to AGILEAN by Michael Burke, President Spectralux Corporation.

“Spectralux has for over 30 years delivered highly reliable and innovative custom solutions in direct response to customer needs in lightplates, keyboards, illuminated displays and lighting in commercial aircraft. We design, build and test products with an emphasis on total system performance.

“Spectralux uses Lean Production techniques to increase the productivity of our shop floor. Lean Thinking enabled us to competitively produce smaller batches of product with shorter lead times. As a result, our customers order from us more often, placing a greater emphasis on our Request for Quote process.

“We streamlined the shop floor by modeling the productivity of our production value streams, but our Request for Quote process was essentially the same it had been for 30 years. We asked AGILEAN to help us apply Lean techniques to the front-office environment.

“The Request for Quote process engages every department within Spectralux. AGILEAN interviewed the stakeholders and developed a productivity model to visually document the process. The model included the direct labor time to perform each step as well as transit and queue wait times.

“The productivity model demonstrated that variation in the Request for Quote process increased the cost and the time to respond to a customer request. The model also revealed that the primary value of the processes was not generating price and ship date, but managing risk. AGILEAN recommended modification to reduce variability and enhance risk mitigation; enabling us to achieve our customer objectives and take out cost.

"AGILEAN delivered. They engaged the organization, worked to established timetables, and fully met our expectations. Best of all, they proved that Lean Production techniques can be applied to the front-office. For Spectralux the status quo of our business processes is no longer good enough."