Meet Honeywell experienced Lean Specialist, Liliana Szabad

Meet Liliana Szabad. She is an experienced Lean Specialist working for Honeywell in Lugoj, Romania.

Liliana's responsibilities as a Lean Specialist include managing the plant improvement plan by organizing Kaizen events and workshops in all the production areas, line balancing, and waste reduction.

Identifying, designing and building manufacturing cells

A part of Liliana's work that she especially enjoys the most is identifying, designing and building manufacturing cells. "Due to my previous experience as a Line Coordinator in production area, I easily observe all the improvement opportunities for the existing manufacturing lines and also for the new ones – coming from Transitions or New Product Introductions (NPIs), even from the pre-production stages," explains Liliana. "Improvements are related to Health Safety and Environment (HSE) – Ergonomics, Quality – by creating the most suitable flow on the line, Efficiency – by designing customized working stations correlated with product particularities."

Liliana enjoys being involved in the early stages of the transitions/NPI, understanding and defining an optimized flow in the line, and balancing the operations in order to achieve the best output with the minimum effort.

"Once the flow and the balancing are set, I start developing the blueprint of the line," Liliana shares. "In this stage, I follow specific guidelines for Ergonomics and Quality. Everything else is flexible and customized depending on particularities of each project. An important input in the final design is coming from the operators, as they will be the final users of the design I make. Once the blueprint is created, I pass it to my team and together build the working stations and the line."

"I find it useful and relaxing, sometimes comparing it to a grown-ups Lego," explains Liliana. "I enjoy what I do day by day in Honeywell, mainly due to the creative nature of my work but also by having the satisfaction each time I receive good feed-back from the operators, as a result of the transformations we do."

Career highlights, achievements and successes

When asked about her career highlights and achievements to date, Liliana says: "When we first started using Tubes & Brackets in Lugoj, I was the only one doing it from start to the end. It was challenging, but it was also very rewarding being the one designing and also building a manufacturing line by myself. It was unusual to see a woman designing and building manufacturing cells, and it was a challenge for me to prove I could do it."

"All the doubts disappeared once my first manufacturing line was commissioned in manufacturing. It was a real success as it was a complex line, where Eltek panels were produced," says LIliana. "The initial footprint, one of the manufacturing areas before the construction, was about 200 square meters. The final layout of the line was using only 70 square meters, and enabled One Piece Flow concept, where two subassembly sublines were feeding the main panel assembly line. After this point, there was no coming back to our old ways of creating working stations or manufacturing lines. Since 2012, when this line was commissioned for manufacturing, my team and I designed and build over 70 manufacturing cells, containing over 300 customized working stations."

Recognizing support for women leaders

Honeywell's work culture and overall support for women leaders has most impressed her the most. "I was deeply impressed by three major events: Carmen Vanea (Integrated Supply Chain, Vice President Safety and Productivity Solutions) coached and mentored me in Lean ways, Giuliana Benzan (Lean Honeywell Building Technologies) for her constant support, and Heather Robinson (Integrated Supply Chain Vice President Fire), who recognized my personal and team’s work during her visit in Lugoj in 2022," says Liliana.