Although your challenges and issues are different from continuous flow manufacturers, Lean Manufacturing is just as applicable to your company. Lean Job Shop, in addition to the basic tenets of Lean Manufacturing, focuses on removing waste from design, engineering, order processing and paperwork flow. The tools also concentrate on helping your company attain quick changeover of tooling, a critical component of your operation.

Process Equipment and Services Company (PESCO) was blessed and cursed with rapid expansion. The Farmington, New Mexico manufacturer of oil and natural gas production equipment began 25 years ago with two people. It now has 200 employees operating in a 60,000-square foot facility.

The rapid expansion forced the company to hire inexperienced workers. The combination of those two factors caused profits to fall and product delivery dates to be missed. In addition raw material and work in process inventories grew to levels that threatened PESCO's cash flow.

CMC's sister center in New Mexico held a Lean workshop for all employees and a separate Lean Job Shop for two departments. The departments followed that training with two 5S projects.

As a result of these projects, the company:

• Reduced WIP between weld assembly and final assembly from over $400,000 to less than $100,000
• Reduced work in process inventory between the code vessel shop and weld assembly from over $300,000 to less than $50,000.
• Increased cash flow more than 300 percent.
• Increased revenues by 12 percent in fiscal year.
• Increased profits by 15 to 20 percent.

And, President Kyle Rhodes is proud to report PESCO accomplished with ALL without a significant capital outlay.

Aspen Manufacturing in Humble, Texas, which makes residential coils to order, had a similar problem with runaway growth. The company quickly found its carefully planned space was inadequate to hold the expanding operations and was no longer optimally laid out. Aspen's architect referred the company to CMC's sister center in Texas. After attending a lean manufacturing workshop, management embraced the concept of cellular manufacturing and implemented it in its new plant.

The Texas center helped Aspect re-evaluate the original designs and saved 65,000 square feet of planned space. That shaved $2.5 million from the cost of the new facility. As an added bonus, Facility Manager Randy Kellum says cellular manufacturing has helped to reduce lead times and increase profits.

Monroe Truck Equipment in Monroe Wis., is a modified job shop in that it manufactures and installs standard and built-to-order snow and ice removal equipment. The company required a job card to be printed for every part. With as many as 1000 job cards on average printed every day tracking that large number of parts passing through the shop caused major delays.

A Value Stream Map indicated communications problems, too much WIP on the floor as well as inefficiencies in layout and storage. After implementing Lean Job Shop, Monroe Truck:

• Reduced the number of jobs in process at any given time from 359 to approximately 16.
• Reduced WIP inventory on the shop floor by 750,000.
• And reclaimed nearly 30 percent of available floor space. And that meant the company saved even more money by not having to continue to rent space in another building.