YPIE Blog Day 13: Herman Miller

Young Professional Industry Experience participant Sean Duffin blogs about what the group learned when they visited Herman Miller.

Today at Herman Miller we were hosted by Emily Dwyer, who took part in the Young Professional Industry Experience in 2016.

Herman Miller has a global turnover of £2.2bilion and over 8,000 employees working worldwide.

The areas covered on our trip were lean manufacturing, quality, brand name, quality control and continuous improvement.

Herman Miller works tirelessly on continuous improvement and lean manufacturing. Andrew Muirhead also focuses on this methodology and has had great success, but also experienced challenges.

It was great to understand some of the tools, techniques and approaches that the team face, this is something that I think we at Andrew Muirhead can learn from.

Like Muirhead, the company has a strong stance on environmental impact with 99% of materials being recycled.

Herman Miller has been working on lean manufacturing and developed a strong relationship with Toyota, which is well known for continuous improvement, and applied the lean approach that has been successful in the automotive industry.

I think Herman Miller should continue to host the Young Professional Industry Experience as it covered a wide range of information on how to adapt to working in a challenging industry.

It has a key drive to be a world leader through being truly excellent in all activities within the organisation.

I had little knowledge of Herman Miller before today’s visit and was impressed with the whole experience.

I enjoyed my day at Herman Miller, and this has been my best day so far. The company has a great attitude to continuous improvement and strives to have a competitive advantage over there competitors in all areas of the business.