Success Stories
from the Industrial Equipment Industry

Problem:
The client was experiencing an increased demand for their products; however, the capacity of the engineer-to-order process and the manufacturing process was limiting the magnitude and rate of growth.

What We Did:

• Provided Business Process Reengineering (BPR) assistance to an international manufacturer of engineer-to-order systems for the power generation and petro-chemical industry.

  • Reengineered and automated the bid & quote / order entry process.
  • Implemented a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System, including a web enabled product configuration system, product data management (PDM) system, and ERP system.
  • Designed and implemented a Lean Manufacturing / Just-in-time Manufacturing system, functioning in an engineer-to-order environment.

Impact:

• Shortened the time from request for quote to product ship by over 75%.
• Increased revenues by 50% without significantly increasing resources.
• Reduced cycle time by over 80%, while increasing transaction capacity by 50%.

Success Stories
from the Medical Equipment Industry

Problem:
Our client is a multi million dollar division of a major medical and rehabilitation equipment manufacturer. The business wanted to introduce a new product that would serve both the rehabilitation and fitness markets at a cost that would be attractive to both markets. The new product would compete with a similar product that had established a solid reputation and had dominated the market for many years. The decision was made early in the design process that the product would be manufactured in a Lean Manufacturing environment from day one.

What We Did:

• Facilitated a cross functional team, using Quality Function Deployment techniques, to determine the requirements of both markets and then translated the market requirements into engineering specifications. We examined the trade-offs between the markets and helped the client make decisions that would position the product for both markets, without raising cost.
• Provided Design for Manufacturability assistance utilizing Boothroyd Dewhurst modeling techniques to minimize the number parts; reduce manufacturing and assembly costs; maximize quality; and reduce the time-to-market. The product was designed to be customized, for its specific market or geography, at the final operations of the manufacturing process. This allowed the product configuration decision to be made late in the Supply Chain, increasing flexibility and achieving short customer lead times.
• Reengineered the Order Entry--Manufacture--Distribution--Service Process, with the objective of reducing the time from receipt of an order to customer delivery from historic levels of several weeks to only a few days.
• Provided Factory Design and Layout assistance to establish a Lean Manufacturing environment, which utilized point-of-use material storage, flow manufacturing and pull scheduling techniques to achieve short cycle times and a high level of flexibility.

Impact:

• The acceptance of the new product in the market place was better than anticipated and initial orders exceeded expectations.
• The company achieved the ability to ship a product within four hours of receipt of order.
• Reduced order entry cycle time by over 50%.
• Manufacturing and assembly labor costs were 30% below target and overall product cost was 20% below target.
• Brought the uptime of the line to over 95%.
• Changed the profit line in this plant by over $30 Million a year.
• Allowed these improvements to be transferred to the US plant where 3 of these lines existed with the same set of problems…we did this work also, and saved this company over $100 Million per year as a consequence.