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Handcrafted in Fort Worth, Texas since 1958, Kisabeth creates long lasting furnishings and millwork known for their superior quality.
With the help of: TMAC
About
The Challenge
Kisabeth has a long history of exceeding customer expectations on their journey for continuous improvement. As a leader in its industry, Kisabeth also values its unique ability to preserve and protect the planet’s resources while producing heirloom furnishings. Kisabeth was interested in learning more about how applying Lean manufacturing principles could improve its ability to deliver its custom furnishings and millwork to its customers. Kisabeth contacted Lynn Tomaszewski with TMAC, part of the MEP National Network™, to schedule a site visit to walk the production floor and discuss opportunities for improvement.
It was really great to have another set of well-trained eyes come into our facility to help us identify these opportunities. We are looking forward to our continued partnership with TMAC and our efforts to make positive changes to advance our ability to meet the needs of our customers.
MEP's Role
TMAC began by working with a core team of department supervisors on the principles of lean manufacturing including identification of value and non-value-added activities. The team identified the importance of maintaining its high level of craftsmanship in building its products and was interested in improving its efficiencies to get projects completed for its customers.
The training by TMAC helped the Kisabeth team to see its activities from a different perspective. Lean efforts stressed the importance of performing tasks to construct and assemble its furnishings and less efforts in walking, moving, adjusting and getting ready to perform an operation. TMAC training also focused on teaching the team how to keep its projects moving throughout its assembly process and eliminate bottlenecks. The Kisabeth team immediately addressed the issues they had discovered and were excited that within one month they were now able to increase its production throughput by more than 40%. The team also identified a bottleneck in their sewing department and were able to determine how to increase their sewing efficiency by installing new motor controls.