Only 2% of lean implementations deliver consistent success—Duggan ensures you’re in that 2%.
Many lean consultants focus on brainstorming, quick fixes and superficial improvements. At Duggan Associates, we don’t just tinker with processes. We design end-to-end systems that work autonomously—making your operation a lever for business growth.
With over 25 years of experience, Duggan pioneered operational excellence, creating proprietary methodologies that bring a lean flow to complex, high-mix environments via a math-based, design-driven technique.
Our method creates a predictable process that your culture can adopt to maintain success without continual management intervention, guesswork or ambiguity. Our systems propel measurable outcomes, ensuring your lean transformation has lasting impact.
“Without a complete end-to-end design for your material flow, lean improvements become disconnected, leading to one improvement causing another failure. For example, if there are four interconnected machines or processes, improving just one can overwhelm the next, creating bottlenecks and making the overall system worse.”
“As part of our transformation journey, we engaged Duggan Associates to guide our lean journey-improving productivity, efficiency, customer and staff experience, and building a stronger culture of continuous improvement.
Their focus on high participation built strong buy-in and a common language across the shop floor. Most importantly, they emphasize sustainable transformation-developing both mindset and capability. I appreciate their close partnership and proactive support.”
– SVP of Transformation & Technology
SIA Engineering Company
Early lean tool use wasn’t the constraint; leadership wanted an operation that grew the business, not one that required daily management heroics. Specific pressures included:
At Duggan Associates, we take traditional lean training further with advanced courses, academic resources and hands-on support to transform how global organizations operate at every level in every area, from complex manufacturing environments to the office.
The result? An evolution from continuous improvement to continuous business growth through achieving operational excellence.
To get there, Duggan Associates offers each organization a customized roadmap supported by formal training and hands-on implementation assistance to show employees how to create an end-to-end, self-healing flow.
Everyone can tell if the flow is normal or abnormal. If it becomes abnormal, employees who work in the flow can repair it before it impacts the customer—all without management’s assistance.
“I began working with Mr. Duggan in 2002 at Sikorsky Helicopters where we applied Kevin’s value stream design and mixed model expertise to create a lean flow through our Black Hawk helicopter assembly and MRO lines. While in the past we had used continuous improvement through local Kaizen events, Kevin’s approach was to teach us principles through formal training that would impact the end-to-end flow of material and information (the Value Stream) for the customer. Kevin’s team worked with our front-line workers to ensure everyone understood the concepts behind our new flow and was able to implement these concepts through the back shops as well as final assembly.
Due to our success with Mr. Duggan at Sikorsky, our parent company United Technologies (now Raytheon Technologies) selected Duggan Associates to implement lean projects and provide formal lean training across all of the portfolio businesses including Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Sundstrand, and Otis Elevator. Kevin worked directly with our chairman as well as the C-level executives, as well as middle management and shop floor personnel.
United Technologies also engaged Duggan Associates to provide a full license of Duggan Associates training material and incorporated it into our world-leading ACE program. The Duggan Associates team worked closely with our team to tailor their material to ensure a good fit and roll-out with ACE. Duggan Associates training material remains at the forefront of lean training within ACE to this day.”
We specialize in 5S, Kaizen, Six Sigma and flow strategies to reduce waste and improve processes.
Duggan embeds lean into your operational framework, creating a value stream design for continuous improvement. Your team actively maintains the future state of operations.
Lean transformation eliminates downtime, minimizes WIP inventory and reduces unnecessary meetings. Clients see faster lead times, improved productivity and lower costs.
No, lean isn’t only about cutting waste. Duggan’s lean methodology focuses on creating predictable systems that improve productivity from end-to-end, eliminate excess inventory and ensure sustained operational growth.
Some companies experience resistance to change, lack of internal expertise and ineffective implementation.
