What’s Freestate's Deal?

Freestate Boring - Kaizen meets Kaikaku

The Relentless Pursuit of Improvement

Many people have heard of Kaizen. It's the Japanese word for continuous improvement. It's at the heart of the famous Toyota Production System and  many Lean Manufacturing practices. Any company that hopes to survive must use some version of Kaizen just to avoid being left behind.

Few have heard of Kaikaku. It means revolutionary change. Kaizen looks for a 3% improvement; Kaikaku looks for a 90% improvement. Kaizen is Toyota; Kaikaku is SpaceX. (Why through away a perfectly good rocket? Let’s land it and re-use it.)

Freestate’s manufacturing process has cut 95% off of the cycle time of the traditional manufacturing process. (1 hour to as little as 3 minutes) In this case, the Kaikaku is the combination of our programming methods, setup tooling and cutting tools. From there we apply Kaizen to continually make it better. Kaizen and Kaikaku; if you want to be the best you need a little of both.

Prior to starting Freestate Boring I spent 20 years with Hirotec America. I started there as a contract machinist, and ended up in India as a Vice President helping to launch Hirotec India. Along the way I contributed a whole bunch of Kaizen and one big piece of Kaikaku, the 2007 Automotive New PACE Award  Winning E3 Electic Hemming Press.

Hirotec is excellent in both Kaizen and Kaikaku. They call it K2 and use an image of that famous mountain as inspiration. Still works for me...

Climb mountians with us...

- Jim Steed