Allit AG Kunststofftechnik

35 ‘Kaizen’ in Japanese, continuous improvement process (CIP) in English. The history of Allit has been very eventful and has seldom proceeded along straight lines. As a one-time contract injection moulder who has since increasingly become an own-brand manufacturer, we have worked for many sec- tors, including pharmaceuticals, medicine, the automotive industry, aviation and DIY. We are continually facing major challenges in terms of materials, professional expertise, capacity utilisation, delivery deadlines and extravagant customer wishes. Thus we have had no choice other than to respond flexibly time and again and to learn from experience. Given our diverse product range, simple piece- work has never been an option: everybody in the company has had to pitch in with their own ideas as often as possible. Intellectual flexibility in the sphere of error avoidance and solution-oriented working practices are now firmly enshrined in our corporate DNA. As we consider every order we ask a series of precise questions, such as: ‘What is feasible?’, ‘How can it be implemented?’, ‘What consequences and effects will it have?’, ‘What is it good for?’ And above all: ‘How can we make it even better?’ We found out that we are not the only ones applying this philosophy when we discovered the Japanese concept of kaizen, the culture of ‘eternal improvement’. This struck a chord with us, and in the guise of the continuous improve- ment process (CIP), the concept took firm hold not only at Allit but throughout German large- scale industry as a whole, and it has preoccupied us ever since. It’s still getting better: questioning, critiquing, checking, reducing, combining, multi- plying, adding, optimising and validating to the maximum feasible degree. > > ! + + + ! = + · + + / / > ! + ! +