Cart Away Concrete Systems Positioned as Industry Leader

The company that would someday become Cart-Away Concrete Systems began its manufacturing journey over 50 years ago in San Jose California as McClintock Metal. Since that time the company moved to Sacramento, shifted its product line, changed its business model and transitioned ownership. In 2004, the company moved to McMinnville, Oregon. For the last several years they have been operating as a leading brand in the trailered concrete mixer industry.

In the past Cart-Away allocated a large portion of its singular component manufacturing processes to reputable contract manufacturers in their local area, focusing their efforts on the fine details of product development, assembly and customer support. However, to remain a dominant leader in their industry they knew that this wasn’t the most sustainable way to operate. In the hopes of mitigating margin erosion and increased competition, the Cart-Away leadership team deemed it necessary to bring some essential manufacturing functions back in-house.

Cart-Away leadership reached out to OMEP,  part of the MEP National Network™, for assistance in implementing their plans to bring manufacturing in-house, seeking analysis of various strategies and guidance on the options that contribute best to their plans for their family and business. OMEP conducted a feasibility analysis to determine go-forward manufacturing protocols related to contract manufacturing vs. scaling of In-house manufacturing. To perform this analysis OMEP utilized value stream mapping (VSM), which is a lean-management method for analyzing the current state. Additionally, OMEP conducted product mapping to understand all of the products that go in and out of the CartAway processes so they could better understand capacity needs for the future as well as equipment needs labor needs.

This process not only identified current states but also highlighted non-valued/value-added activities related to using contract manufacturing vs. in-house manufacturing. OMEP also partnered with Cart-Away to create a future-state manufacturing VSM which included internal manufacturing options, financial modeling, facility layout, and capabilities analysis while keeping equipment needs, lead time and supply chain requirements, as well as staffing needs in mind.