Albion, NE

Practice Area:
Manufacturing Systems - Lean Manufacturing Company Profile:
Sentinel Buildings is a manufacturer of engineered-to-order buildings having many combinations of specifications. Sentinel has approximately 35 employees and is located in the rural community of Albion, Nebraska. Sentinel started in the home of Wayne and Bev Buller and has grown in size to be housed in a manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Albion and the office and administrative functions in town.

Situation:
NMEP was advertising a public training session in Lean Manufacturing 101 at CCC-Platte Campus. Wayne Buller with Sentinel Buildings called to find out more about the training. The training was explained and Wayne opted to send at least 10 employees to this class. Then the decision was made to bring the Lean Manufacturing 101 training to Sentinel Buildings and train an entire class of 20 employees. The Lean 101 trainig was followed with a second day of training that included Value Stream Mapping.

Solution:
In the opening session, NMEP was faced with the reality of the 3 R's of manufacturing. Resistance, Resentment and Reliance on old ways. As the day progressed, many of the employees that were conviced it wouldn't work and began to consider the possibilities of changing a process or two to eliminate wastes that had not been so apparent prior to the training. The second day of training on the Value Stream Mapping went just as well. The NMEP field agent had created a Current STate Map of their process prior to the training. This Map was used as a basis for the identificatin of the process wastes that were detected. Employees reviewed the Map and additional process wastes were detected. The next step had all employess review their process and mantch the detected wastes to a Lean Tool. The last step of the training was to develop a Lean Implementation Plan and assign chairmen to insure the final completion of the Lean Implementation Plan.

Results:
The day following the training, the teams immediately began to work on the Implementation Plans. In fact, the plans went so well, they were able to move projected implementation dates ahead of schedule on a few of the projects. Sentinel was able to stream line the order processing time and reduce redundant checks in the process from up to 8 weeks down to 5 weeks. Much of the "dead time" in the order processing was reduced or eliminated and this improved the time for an order to reach manufacturing. Duplicate data entry was eliminated by revising the computer system and an order tracking system was developed. Manufacturing began utilizing a Kanban system to order raw materials and make standard items. This saved the time of the production control people in having to schedule these items for production. Also, inventory control of these items was improved and stock-outs were eliminated. Overall, Sentinel was able to maximize their production week and to keep the manufacturing pipeline in a continuous flow. Sentinel was able to complete these Implementation Plans in less than 3 months of work. The benefits for the employees and the company were the following: better communication on order status, improved customer delivery; 3 week reduction in order lead time; reduced overtime; increased sales volume with the same number of employees; paperwork reduction; maximize their production week and leveling of the production scheduled each week.

Testimonial:
Wayne Buller said that providing this training to the majority of his employees took them away from their everyday work but was worth the time and expense to provide the training and ability to recognize wastes that are happening in all of their processes. Everyday the employees are identifying wastes and discussing ways to eliminate or reduce them. Steve Briese, the Sales Manager stated that before the Lean training many steps in processing the sales orders were repeated over and over. After the training they were able to reduce order processing to 3 steps and eliminate the "dead time" an order was waiting on approvals. Scott Stuhmiller, the Head Engineer found that Lean Manufacturing training allowed him to recognize the wastes in the engineering and design process. This resulted in eliminating redundancy in the design process to make peoples time more efficient. Al Starzec, the Purchasing Manager, found that in developing the Kanban system to reorder standard clips and plates and the raw materials has saved him time in ordering and scheduling these items. He is now able to more closely monitor f his purchasing activities.