I was delighted to have been invited recently to meet Richard Pounder Managing Director of CLS (Complete Lean Solutions) and his head office team. Established in 2004 CLS specialises in helping organisations save money and become more efficient by offering lean support and training to clients around the world, from their offices at Bretby Business Park and Melbourne, Australia. UK staff, originally from South Derbyshire are based all over the county and help business reduce waste, upskill the workforce and increase productivity and efficiency. Richard employs a team of 15 who all have at least 5 years experience with Toyota, where identifying and removing waste is a way of life. This experience enables his staff to go into other businesses to do the same. They all have extensive experience of deploying Lean in different environments from manufacturing to banking, offices to shipyards. In the last 18months they have successfully completed 32 individual projects, trained over 850 people and created £12million of sustainable savings for their customers. I was particularly interested in the way the Governments Training Levy can be used by businesses with an annual wage bill of over £3million. CLS offer a City and Guilds Apprenticeships programme “Improving Operational Performance”. This programme is available for anybody up to 65years old and fits in with the Governments Fuller Working Lives initiative which has seen many people taking new training Apprenticeships at the age of 55plus. Companies who invest time to up-skill their workforce will benefit from more engaged and motivated employees which eventually leads to real improvements in their financial bottom line and a culture of continuous improvement is good for everybody. I applaud CLS for showing companies how to be more efficient and help train and re-train their workforce.”
This was first published as a press release in August 2017