Maersk is an global shipping and distribution company. Their distribution facility in Washington State faced performance challenges resulting from variability in incoming traffic, workforce turnover and non-standard processes. 

The operation had three primary customers for the product that is transferred from containers and loaded onto vans. The primary customer has six distribution centers and multiple splits of container contents for loading into vans. The facility had two docks with twenty six doors, each separated by an open warehouse space of 800 feet. The size of the warehouse made a traditional cross dock method impractical.

The workforce turnover has been a large factor in production disruption, exceeding 20% in some months. This combined with the increasing volume and complexity of product mix required a new way of working. Maersk chose kaizen.

Due to the extremely busy schedule it was impractical to remove staff from their daily work to conduct lean training or kaizen workshops. The Kaizen consultants took advantage of the meetings at the start, middle and end of shifts to provide brief training, solicit ideas from workers and supervisors, and bringing managers to the warehouse floor to make decisions. 

The result of this approach was improved employee morale, a stabilization in the employee turnover rate, a 25 % improvement in orders filled per worker, and improved flexibility of the process overall to demand changes.