Increasing Forklift Time Utilization in a Food Equipment Manufacturing Plant with a Kaizen Event

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted several services organizations such as hotels and restaurants. Some studies suggest that 50% of restaurants closed during quarantining days will not reopen in the future, producing a domino effect with their suppliers. Therefore, to survey in this crisis, organizations focused their efforts on reducing waste and/or repurposing their manufacturing operations by introducing new products. The purposes of this paper are (1) to mention an overall strategy followed by food equipment manufacturing plant to address the COVID-19 pandemic challenge; and (2) to describe one of the five Kaizen events conducted to address COVID-19 challenges. This Kaizen focused on increasing forklifts utilization rate from 44% to 80%. The authors followed three steps to achieve this aim: understanding company background, conducting a literature review, and elaborating on a Kaizen event. Practitioners in manufacturing and services organizations could extract several highlights to help them to sort operations problems during crisis time. However, future research still needs to understand the socio-economic impact that COVID-19 pandemic around the world.