Bath Fitter Management System

Come tour Bath Fitter, a company living by the motto: "Don't be right, get it right."

Please note: A signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is required to attend this tour. The tour site will provide safety glasses.

Overview

Bath Fitter leaders put people first. This includes prioritizing health and safety and inspiring, empowering, and elevating teams to be their best and engage in meaningful work. They contribute to the culture of trust and ensure everyone feels valued. Bath Fitter takes great pride in its Bath Fitter Management System, which consists of the physical environment, visual management, value stream mapping, product integrity, excellent audits, leader standard work, total predictive maintenance, the Kanban program and Kaizen events.

Bath Fitter believes in the continuous learning and development of its leaders and line employees. All plant employees have completed the lean yellow belt training, and its leaders are in the process of completing the lean green belt training. Bath Fitter University was created as a learning platform using lean training, LinkedIn, and Gemba Academy videos. Bath Fitter has a structured onboarding process for new hires, bringing a value-added interaction between employees and supervisors.

Bath Fitter's Lean journey began in 2016 with visual management and 6-S. The company adopted the Plant metric boards showing KPIs, with each department's continuous improvement area showing the KAIs. It then journeyed into leader standard work. In 2018, Bath Fitter began to use the A3 problem-solving tool that includes the fishbone diagram and the five whys. The company has been honored five years in a row as a Tennessee Top Workplace and Great Place to Work.

Company

Bath Fitter lives by the motto: "Don't be right, get it right." It embodies the spirit of continual improvement, helping the company and the world become a better place every day by recognizing problems and finding solutions.

That spirit comes from the top: Bath Fitter founders and brothers Brian, Wayne and Glenn Cotton. They took a simple idea (that there should be an easier and more reliable way to remodel your bathroom than demolition) that they were stuck with in the 80s and invested lots of hard work. They turned this idea into a thriving international company. First, they saw that commercial properties, like hotels, were running into big problems renovating their old bathrooms. Demolition cost the businesses a lot of time and money, and contractors could be fickle. Bath Fitter provided the solution, letting commercial spaces give its patrons the luxurious tubs and showers hotels are famous for and get back to business sooner.

But the Cotton brothers believed homeowners deserved the same sparkling baths as 5-star hotels, without the extensive and extended demolition that can seriously inconvenience home life. So, they quickly expanded their offerings for residential homes. For more than 35 years, Bath Fitter has worked to perfect that process to bring everyone a better bath that considers real people's needs. Bath Fitter tubs and showers are made of high-gloss acrylic that wipes clean easily and are installed in one day for ultimate convenience. The company still works every day to continually improve its products and customers' lives.

That's the Bath Fitter promise — the spirit of continual improvement guides the company as it looks forward to a long future of serving its communities and getting it right. https://www.bathfitter.com/