ZAGO Manufacturing Company Reduces Inventory to Boost the Bottom Line

ZAGO Manufacturing Company is an award-winning family-owned business manufacturing high-tech sealing fasteners and switch boots. Their story began over 27 years ago at the New Jersey Institute of Technology Enterprise Development Center Small Business Incubator. From there, ZAGO Manufacturing grew into a full-fledged global manufacturing company operating from a 100-year old refurbished factory located in Newark, New Jersey.

ZAGO Manufacturing wanted to address their packed warehouse and uncover where else they could add value to their business. Inventory is difficult to manage. Having too much is a costly burden, and ZAGO Manufacturing was working with a tremendous amount of inventory generated from over-production of custom-manufactured parts. This inventory was taking up space, time, and putting stress on employees. Much of it became almost impossible to find and it was clogging up their system. For help, ZAGO turned to NJ MEP, part of the MEP National Network™.

NJMEP and ZAGO agreed that an inventory management and value stream mapping project would provide the highest possible return on their investment. The first step was implementing a new inventory management system. The value steam mapping project helped identify non-value-added waste in the entire workflow. Jackie Luciano, Vice President, and Gail Friedberg, CEO, worked together with NJMEP’s consultant to identify the system that would make the most sense for their operation. Leadership guided the implementation of an inventory management system by following the guidance of NJMEP’s resource. The next step was to determine what to keep, what inventory to dispose of and how to keep better track of it all. ZAGO Manufacturing now has a more efficient and effective way to process and manage inventory moving forward.