Home > Company > Improvement Program GROWTTH > GROWTTH in Brief

• The idea of GROWTTH is modeled on the Japanese "kaizen" projects, which pursue "steady change for the better" and which have been used successfully at our partner company, NOK, in Japan for many years. It was in 1992 that Freudenberg-NOK GP in the USA introduced its own GROWTTH initiative to provide better conditions for our customers through continuous improvement of processes and work methods.

• Freudenberg-NOK GP became the forerunner in the use of "lean practices" in the USA.

• Just a few years later, its example was being emulated by other Freudenberg companies, first among them Freudenberg Seals and Vibration Control Technology.

• The salient features of GROWTTH are: Teams of staff from different departments and functions get together for a period of time limited to a few days in order to formulate specific solutions to a very specific problem, frequently in order to improve work procedures. The results of the team's work are then implemented directly, and their success monitored.

• The teams are given wide-ranging autonomy and decision-taking prerogatives, a policy which reflects and underlines the company's basic philosophy of transferring more responsibility to its staff, and also increasingly encouraging them to make continuous improvements a permanent element in their daily worklife. The aim is a corporate culture where this basic mindset has become reality.