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Truss Company Focuses on Workflow
With the help of: New York Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NY MEP)
About
Structural Wood Corporation (SWC), located in Waddington, New York, builds and delivers wood roof trusses, wall panels, and flooring systems across NY and Vermont. SWC has provided exceptional service to lumberyards, contractors and builders for more than 35 years. The company employs approximately 25 people.
The Challenge
As the business grew staff and equipment were added to SWC’s shop to meet immediate needs. Equipment was installed wherever it fit to meet customer demand, but without a larger work-flow vision. Last winter, SWC leadership decided to take their seasonal slow-down to learn and implement some Lean principles.
CITEC has been an integral part of our success from our inception. Through the years they have provided support to us in several ways. The latest project really helped boost us into making some of the changes we have been talking about for years. It also helped empower our employees as they were able to make changes to their jobs, and see the benefits first hand. We will continue to work with CITEC as we are expecting large growth over the next several years.
MEP's Role
SWC engaged CITEC, a New York MEP affiliate of NIST MEP, to develop a program teaching foundational tools and immediately went out onto the shop floor to use the concepts to improve productivity. The results were that the team developed an understanding that there was lack of flow between the sawing operation and the truss assembly operation.
The team used the tools they learned in their Lean Foundations training to develop a strategy and then implement a floor plan redesign. The saw (the constraint) was relocated to optimize the flow of the WIP to the assembly operation. Purchase and installation of a new Floor Truss machine is underway, which is expected to help open new markets.