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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

Business Continuity Assessment Mitigates Covid-19 Disruptions

With the help of: FloridaMakes

About

Polyhistor International, a product design, development, and manufacturing company employs five people in their Jacksonville location. The company has a small CNC shop with assembly capabilities along with 3D printing abilities for prototypes for the aerospace, medical, lighting, automotive, and consumer industries.

The Challenge

Hurricane season was fast approaching, and no county in Florida is safe from such a disaster. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic had created its own set of disaster emergencies. Polyhistor wished to mitigate these risks, and create a more sustainable and safer environment for their company and employees. The company turned to the First Coast Manufacturers Association, a member of the FloridaMakes Network and part of the MEP National Network™, for guidance.
I was introduced to our Business Advisor, Paula DeLuca, at a Board Meeting at the First Coast Manufacturing Association (FCMA). Paula’s knowledge and experience in manufacturing gave us the jump start we needed to look at how we could improve the overall business and be safe. I appreciate her friendly and professional approach. FloridaMakes has been a great partner in helping us with improving our business model. The results of the Business Continuity Assessment helped us seamlessly move some of our operations temporarily off-site during the COVID pandemic. We highly recommend FloridaMakes to any business planning to make positive changes and build redundancy in their processes without added cost.
— Peter Schonning, Owner

MEP's Role

The FloridaMakes’ Business Advisor engaged the company in a Business Continuity Assessment. This in-depth risk assessment evidenced areas for improvement on the people, process, and facilities side of the business. As a result, Polyhistor International has grown sales, increased new product development growth, and found cost savings in the past year due to investing in training their team and streamlining processes to be more efficient and shortening lead-times.

In addition, the company has started working towards the ISO process training with an expected outcome of increasing new potential customer orders. FloridaMakes’ network of consultant experts helped Polyhistor International implement these improvements to realize immediate and long-term growth for the business.

Created November 4, 2020, Updated July 12, 2021