PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Horizon designs, manages the manufacturing, and distributes high-end radio-controlled planes, cars, trains and boats. Their sales increased dramatically during the 2020 pandemic while experiencing significant supply chain disruption. In addition, they plan to triple sales in the next 5 years. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS: SALES & OPERATION PLANNING Developed demand planning and production planning…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Rio Grande, a Berkshire Hathaway company, experienced accelerated growth that outpaced the capabilities of its supply chain and warehouse capacity. On time delivery, fill rate, and labor productivity in warehouse operations had all suffered poor performance. The warehouse needed additional people to support both growth and the degradation of labor productivity. Customers…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Tacony’s Nancy’s Notions (NN) sewing supply ecommerce division was struggling with order fulfillment to its consumers, while Amazon was increasing its penetration to the sewing and quilting consumer market. NN was 8 days behind on shipping orders and when orders did ship it had an 88% fill rate due to items not…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Crescent is a distributor of HVAC equipment and parts in the Midwest. Their customers are heating and air conditioning contractors who install and repair residential and commercial units. Crescent Parts’ largest customer represented over 20% of total sales, almost 4 times greater than the next largest customer. As a result, Crescent launched…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Seyer designs and produces specialized aerospace products that require precision machining, welding and testing for commercial aircraft and the military. Each successful product requires an extensive back office set of processes. Seyer wanted to improve their “office” process efficiency and quality, which included the entire program cycle, excluding the manufacturing operations. LEAN…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Electromechanical solid-state manufacturing company with disruptive technology transitioning from early-stage product development to full production, was squeezed into a small facility footprint, struggling with quality yield and throughput as demand ramped up. LEAN ASSESSMENT A Lean Assessment was conducted and the resulting recommendations were to apply 5S throughout the facility, Value Stream…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Dema Engineering is a designer and manufacturer of industrial valves and chemical dispensing equipment. (See below two valves in a assembly and test operation.) They needed to reduce cycle time and improve quality. Throughput time was as high as 6 weeks and yield on certain components was 93%. Both were due to…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Sundberg carries a wide variety of SKUs to support their ecommerce and appliance repair customers’ needs. Because these items are used when home appliances are broken, availability is critical. However, inventory investment had grown faster than sales and customers were complaining about stock-outs of key items. REDUCTION OF LOST SALES AND SURPLUS…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Johnson Controls Parts NA business unit was experiencing a combination of increased inventory and backlog. They had too much of the wrong inventory and not enough of the right inventory. This problem became exacerbated during the pandemic as a result of the supply chain shortages and increased and highly variable lead times.…

PROBLEM / CHALLENGE Grand Rock sells a wide selection of aftermarket exhaust products. They produce to order, have a product-line they produce and stock for inventory and distribute for other manufacturers. The production facility and warehouse are in one facility. The business has experienced significant growth and with increased raw material inventory due in large…