Vermeer Corp.’s rapid recovery from a direct hit by an EF-3 tornado in mid-July was due in large part to “tremendous agility and adrenaline” from all of its employees, Vermeer Chair Mary Andringa told participants during last week’s “90 Ideas in 90 Minutes” event. 

Additionally, the manufacturing company’s “lean” mentality made a huge difference in how it was able to react to the disaster, which in an instant took out 400,000 square feet of its production space, Andringa said. Vermeer has been on its continuous improvement journey for the past 20 years. 

“Within 24 hours, our sales and our ops people had gotten together and prioritized the most important products we needed to get back,” she recalled. “Because we had everything on wheels and labeled because of workplace organization, we were able to actually retrieve things out of the damaged plant and move them into a new place, and we knew almost exactly how much space it took.” 

Using a Kaizen approach of mobilizing small, high-intensity teams, Vermeer was able to effectively tackle some seemingly insurmountable challenges. 

“I think the way we think [lean] — what’s the present state and what does the future state need to be — made a huge difference in our ability to mobilize,” she said.