Wisconsin Manufacturers Report $133 Million Impact

Keywords: Improved Manufacturing

Wisconsin’s small and mid-size manufacturers reported more than $133 million impact as a result of assistance they received from the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (WMEP) during the past fiscal year.

Manufacturers reported $90.3 million in increased and retained sales, $23.6 million in cost savings, and $19.9 million in investment in new plant and equipment. WMEP, which helps small and mid-size manufacturers become more competitive, provided services to 441 manufacturers last year.

“This year’s impact is especially significant given the current economic challenges for manufacturing,” said Michael Klonsinski, WMEP’s executive director. “Wisconsin’s small manufacturers are working hard to modernize and adopt world-class manufacturing strategies. This is important because it helps us keep jobs and business in Wisconsin.”

More than 3/4 of the manufacturers surveyed said they were more competitive as a result of projects with WMEP. Another 92 percent said they improved employee skills. Eighty-seven percent said they increased throughput; 76 percent reduced lead times. The impact data is based on independent customer surveys compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

© Copyright 2003 by WMEP.org

WMEP provides technical expertise and hands-on implementation assistance to small and midsize manufacturing firms on advanced manufacturing technologies and business practices including lean manufacturing, ISO, value chain management, and strategic repositioning services for manufacturers and manufacturing facilities located in Wisconsin.

Innovation Blitz: Using Your Strengths to Your Advantage

Keywords: Strategic Repositioning

Contracts are going to Asia, customers have fallen on hard times and sales have taken a hit. Now, more than ever, you need to change the way you look at doing business – ask hard questions and get good answers. Simply, it’s time to innovate.

Today production of goods overseas is easier, cheaper and more profitable than it was even a few years ago. Everything is changing rapidly. For any company, taking a long, hard look in the mirror can be revealing. You may find that you have undervalued a particular strength. Or perhaps your outlook is firmly lodged in the glory days of the past.

Innovation can take your company to a new level. But how can a company innovate and look at itself differently when it’s difficult to pull yourself out of the day-to-day grind? WMEP has created a way through its Strategic Repositioning Process.

Monroe Truck Equipment Maps

Keywords: Job Shops

When Chris Holverson first heard about continuous improvement in manufacturing, he thought it was only for repetitive manufacturing and didn’t apply to the job shop where he worked as a production supervisor.

But he had some ideas for improving efficiency in the shop, Monroe Snow & Ice Control, which is a division of Monroe Truck Equipment (MTE), located in Monroe, Wisconsin. Monroe Snow & Ice is a modified job shop, manufacturing and installing both standard and build-to-order snow and ice removal equipment, such as plows, scrapers, sanders, tailgate spreaders, and hitches, plus the computers that run the equipment.

"We were having problems with lead times and maintaining on-time delivery," Holverson explains. One major cause was the difficulty in tracking the large numbers of parts that were going through the shop. All of the shop’s orders or "jobs" are set up using a manufacturing system that requires a "job card" to be printed for every part used for a job.

Extend Equipment Life & Productivity with TPM

Keywords: Total Productive Maintenance

It’s a manufacturer’s nightmare: You have a short shipping window for delivering a huge order to an important customer, and that one machine that always gives you trouble—the older one that makes the parts used in almost every product you manufacture—decides to break down. All of a sudden you can’t ship product.

That’s where Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) can help. TPM is a process that maximizes the productivity of your equipment for its entire life. It’s a proactive method for predicting and preventing unplanned downtime.

One of the critical building blocks in the lean continuous improvement process, TPM can increase a machine’s capacity by 25%-60%, reduce maintenance costs by 10%-50%, virtually eliminate overtime shifts, and increase productivity and profits. In addition, TPM allows you to carry lower inventory levels because you don’t need to cover unplanned downtime.

Productivity Jump Helps Firm Win Lambeau Contract

Keywords: Lean Manufacturing

You don’t have to be a huge operation with hundreds of employees to reap the benefits of lean manufacturing. Even the smallest of companies see lean as a powerful tool to improve productivity and attract new customers.

Milwaukee-based House of Stone witnessed this firsthand after landing a major contract for the Lambeau Field Renovation Project. The contract represents nearly a 20 percent increase in sales this year for the company, which employs 11 and is located in the heart of Milwaukee’s old industrial district.

House of Stone manufactures granite and marble counter tops used in commercial and residential construction. For the Lambeau project, it will fabricate the DuPont Zodiaq™ quartz-surface counter tops used in luxury skyboxes, public restrooms and concession stands.

Lean Reaps Rewards for Build-to-order Manufacturer

Keywords: Lean Manufacturing

CEO Peter Mancuso toured manufacturing companies in Japan and knew that lean manufacturing would improve productivity and cycle times at his company, Lindquist Machine Corporation. He just wasn’t sure how to teach his staff to implement lean principles. A custom machine manufacturer whose core competencies include machining, assembly and project management, Lindquist Machine Corporation employs 200 people in Green Bay.

Mancuso called WMEP for help, and manufacturing specialist David Lange scheduled a series of on-site lean workshops. Each workshop included both Lindquist managers and associates. The company estimates that it’s one of the only manufacturers to formally train all its employees in lean manufacturing. Before long, all Lindquist associates had a solid foundation in lean manufacturing. What once was Mancuso.s vision is Lindquist’s reality. Associates fully understand lean manufacturing and work every day to implement its concepts.

Trump Your Competition Through Strategic Repositioning

Keywords: Strategic Repositioning

It is difficult to imagine that the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer started in the late 1800’s as a wood pulp manufacturer. Despite early external threats, by the beginning of the 1900’s the business grew to include wire cables and rubber. A hundred years later, Nokia took a long hard look at its core competencies and determined which ones would take them into the future. It was during this time that Nokia made a strategic decision to enter the cellular phone market and today one is hard-pressed not to hear that familiar ring tone from a nearby cell phone.

What allows one company to survive, change and thrive while other similar companies with seemingly the same challenges do not? How does a manufacturer successfully cope with global competition and still maintain a competitive advantage in the market place?

To Survive and Prosper: Know Your Customers

Keywords: Customer Service

Keith Peterson spends 60 percent of his time on the road, visiting customers and attending nearly 20 trade shows a year. Is Peterson a high-powered salesperson? No, he’s the owner and president of a small manufacturing company looking to enhance his company’s position and future in the marketplace.

Companies such as Peterson’s Humane Manufacturing have found themselves facing tough challenges – foreign competition, pricing and delivery pressures, and a declining market share.

Recently, WMEP assembled a group of CEOs of successful small manufacturing firms to find out how they had repositioned their companies to overcome these challenges and thrive. Each company had this in common – the CEOs learned that they needed to stay close to their customers in order to be successful. This included developing systems to continually learn about customer needs and develop solutions to better meet those needs.

Creative Solutions in Healthcare Cost Management

Keywords: Health Care

With the average annual health benefit payout in Wisconsin at $6,940 per employee and 18-25% annual increases in health insurance rates, it’s not surprising that health insurance costs are at the top of the "concern list" for many Wisconsin manufacturers. The health insurance cost crisis is having a disturbing effect on the ability of companies to compete and remain profitable in today’s marketplace. In a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers, respondents said that health care costs are the top "major threat to the future of U.S. manufacturing."

In today’s economic uncertainty and competitive environment, boosting the bottom line is critical to long-term success. One way to do this is through health care cost management initiatives.

A ray of hope

In most employee populations, 10-15% of participants in the health plan create 80% of the expenses. Not surprisingly, these expenses impact your annual premium increases – and your annual increases impact your ability to provide good benefits for your employees.

Alliance Network Provides Full Range of Expertise

Keywords: Human Resources, Quality

In a perfect world, there would be an expert on staff to handle every situation that arises in the course of running your manufacturing business.

An employee issue? Call the HR department. A concern about hazardous materials? Talk to the person in charge of environmental matters.

But alas, we live in the real world. And the reality for many of Wisconsin’s small manufacturers is that they don’t always have access to the resources they need to respond to a fast-growing number of business issues, challenges and opportunities.

To help companies find the resources and expertise they need, the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (WMEP) has created an alliance network of firms that provide services to small and mid-size manufacturers. These firms address a full range of business issues, including human resources, information technology, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, family business planning and Internet strategy.

Spacesaver: A TPM Success Story

Keywords: Lean Manufacturing

Line 5, a highly automated coil feed fabrication line and one of the core processes on the shop floor, made every day a challenge at Spacesaver.

"We basically all came in every day and kind of crossed our fingers and asked, ‘How’s it running today?’ It really would determine what your day was like," recalls Jim Muth, vice president of operations at Spacesaver. "The machine was older, it wasn’t consistent or capable of responding quickly enough, and we thought, ‘We need to replace it, it’s past its time.’"

But a full replacement, with retooling and automation, would have required a capital expenditure of $750,000 to $1 million. "We were willing to try something else first," Muth says.

Spacesaver Corporation, with 475 employees based in Fort Atkinson, manufactures high-density storage solutions, which include mobile and stationary shelving storage systems for the justice, healthcare, library, museum, business, and governmental sectors.

Strategic Planning Fuels Growth, Profits

Keywords: Planning Ahead

The strategic planning process that would guide Avista, Inc. through the next five years didn’t begin in an executive conference room. It began on a warm summer day on the backwaters of the Mississippi River.

“One beautiful Friday afternoon we took some of our people out on a boat and threw out an anchor,” recalls Avista president Jim Schneller. “We wanted to make a determination about the future of our company, where we wanted to be in five years.”

The Platteville-based company, which manufactures aeronautical and medical engineering software, decided to pursue a major growth strategy. The question was how to get there. “

Most businesses today run with a fairly lean management team,” Schneller said. “All your energy is focused on peddling the bicycle, but not necessarily steering it where you want to go.”

Strategies to Survive and Thrive During the Slowdown

Keywords: Value Stream Mapping

Despite the challenges of the current economic slowdown, there are some things manufacturers can do right now to boost the bottom line – and build a stronger future once the recovery begins.

We’ve talked to some of the experts at WMEP, our customers, and tapped a few of our alliance partners to get their ideas. Some of these strategies offer an almost immediate payback, others require more time. Whatever the case, these strategies can help you reduce costs, rev up your performance, attract new customers and most importantly – strengthen your bottom line.

1. Attack waste “gold mines”
Often the first step in lean manufacturing, value stream mapping identifies waste “gold mines” in your manufacturing processes. A value stream map is a visual representation of all the activities required to bring a product line from raw materials into the hands of the customer. By mapping the flow of material and information, a company can quickly see where costs can be reduced and improvements can be made.

Companies Use Down Time to Invest in Future

Keywords: Effeciency

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. That’s true of many Wisconsin manufacturers who are busy retooling their operations during the current economic slowdown. These manufacturers believe that lean and other improvement strategies will make them stronger and more competitive once the recovery begins.

“When the economy is red hot and companies are swamped with orders, the quest for greater efficiency often takes a back seat to getting product out the door,” says Wayne Raisleger, a Milwaukee based WMEP manufacturing specialist. “It’s a Catch 22: companies need to be more efficient but cannot find the time to do so.” But now that the economy has slowed, those pressures have eased.

“For many companies, this is an ideal time to invest in the future,” says Raisleger. A key reason: employees have more time to participate in training and productivity-enhancing projects.

Setup Reduction Delivers Savings Now and in the Future

Keywords: Lean Manufacturing

In today’s hyper-speed economy, time is money. On the shop floor, that means the amount of time employees spend setting up a machine to run a new batch or order is more important than ever. Wasted minutes and hours - over the course of weeks and months -can take a big bite out of corporate profits.

That’s why a growing number of Wisconsin manufacturers are adopting setup reduction and quick changeover techniques. The money-saving techniques are a tool of lean manufacturing, which focuses on eliminating waste in manufacturing operations. "By shaving minutes and hours off setup times, manufacturers can see dollars drop to the bottom line," says WMEP.s Keith Lodahl, a manufacturing specialist and setup reduction expert. "It’s not uncommon to reduce setup time 50 percent on the first pass."

Once employees learn the techniques, they can apply them again to achieve even greater savings, he adds.

InPro Cuts Lead Time Applying Lean to the Front Office

Keywords: Lean Office

At InPro Corporation, some customer orders rushed through the system, but moving other orders through was a torturous process—and the company wanted to know why.

InPro, based in Muskego, Wisconsin, has been progressively introducing lean principles into its operations on the shop floor for several years. But more than half of InPro’s 250 employees are in the front office. So the front office became the next logical target.

"We wanted to become more efficient in our office processes and administrative flow," says John Marek, vice president of finance at InPro.

He and several InPro operations managers attended a lean manufacturing workshop. InPro employees also received training in value stream mapping (VSM) and value-added flow analysis (VAFA), both valuable tools for front office process improvement.