Matt Seeuwen

North American Continuous Improvement Manager, Mitsubishi Chemical Group, Scranton, PA, USA

Matt currently serves as the North American Continuous Improvement Manager for Mitsubishi Chemical Group Engineered Shapes and Solutions. He has led the Continuous Improvement strategy development and deployment across the North American region and has helped guide the organization on their CI transformation journey. He is also an active practitioner, and both facilitates and supports projects across the organization to drive change, and also enjoys coaching to build organizational capability. Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Engineering and is a trained Six Sigma Black belt. He is also certified as an ISO9001 and RC14001 auditor. He has held various positions with Mitsubishi Chemical Group in Process Engineering, Supervision, Quality Management and Continuous Improvement, and previously worked as a Process Engineer with Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Division. Matt is dedicated to driving Continuous Improvement culture throughout the organization in the pursuit of improving the processes, products and services and bringing speed-to-value.

To Stability and Beyond

Continuous Improvement is far from a new concept to Mitsubishi. We have been braving the CI path for decades, with varying degrees of training, knowledge and exposure and consequently, varying degrees of success across the organization. Over the last 5 years Mitsubishi Chemical Group Engineered Shapes and Solutions (MCG ES&S) has embarked on a Continuous Improvement journey of stabilization and optimization focused on a holistic and unified approach to improve our processes, products, and service. Our goals including maturing the culture of the organization with a focus on bringing speed-to-value.The program began with establishing the foundational framework and key elements necessary for fostering a Continuous Improvement culture. Some of the key elements to the program’s success include a project hopper, identifying performance gaps and opportunities across the region and developing business cases creating a target rich environment for Operational improvements. establishment of standardized financial KPI’s directly related to project value capture, implementation of a financial dashboard for reporting, as well as driving standardization of methodologies and tools.MCG ES&S doubled down on building organizational capability through training and mentorship to enhance the knowledge and capabilities of our people. These efforts were directed at creating a CI mindset culture through leading change, creating a shared need, shaping a vision and mobilizing commitment, supported by a routine cadence of reporting and knowledge sharing.Important supporting tools include Project Charters, 4-blockers, 5S, Standard Work, and regularly scheduled project reviews. Without these fundamentals in place the projects typically regress quickly without achieving their targeted improvements. Key benefits include safety improvements directly tied to project work, improved efficiency by elimination of non-value add steps, scrap reduction, and improved throughput which in turns results in additional sales capacity, improved on-time delivery performance, and ultimately cost reductions directly impacting to the bottom line.Our CI model unites our efforts to include areas across our business with the goal of making Continuous Improvement part of our day-to-day culture. This CI mindset is further enhanced as this people and data driven focus meshes with our digital transformation model.This combination of foundational elements has yielded substantial and sustained improvements across the North American region. We are excited to share our efforts, learning and foundational framework and key elements that have been successful for Mitsubishi Engineered Shapes and Solutions North American Region.