Lean Implementation – Industrial Equipment

TriVista led efforts to drive process improvement, expand capacity and reduce inventory at a leading industrial equipment manufacturer.

The Challenge

TriVista’s client was a private equity owned $65 million manufacturer of industrial equipment.  The company was trying to explore ways to increase capacity without adding additional roofline – max capacity was reached at their existing facility and management didn’t want to relocate.  TriVista was retained to explore capacity expansion opportunities and redesign the facility layout.  At the beginning of the engagement, TriVista consultants realized that there were other significant issues impacting the business.  Excess inventory, lack of useful metrics, excess material movement and insufficient training for shop floor employees were only a handful of the issues our team encountered early on.

Through our initial diagnostic process, we identified the following key challenges:

• Lack of accurate measurement system to track direct labor hours
• Excess product movement
• Excess WIP in the manufacturing process
• Excess inventory
• Excess non-value added time in the manufacturing process
• An average of only 70% first pass yield on all mechanical/electrical drawings
• Lack of visibility in the manufacturing process
• Extremely risk and change adverse
• Used to not implementing change unless 100% sure it will work
• Lack of factory employee training and knowledge of factory process
• Non-empowered employees

Our Approach

With backlog continuing to build, the TriVista team needed to respond quickly to increase capacity and fulfill customer orders. TriVista rapidly designed collaborative projects that would address these key issues, and set goals for the projects:

• Increase output by 50%
• Optimize Material Flow
• Increase Visibility of Processes (Visual Management)
• Reduce WIP
• Reduce Manufacturing Cycle Time
• Implement 5S throughout facility (including front office)
• Reduce Inventory by $1.4 Million
• Increase EBITDA by 200 basis points