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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

PVA Achieves Rapid Growth and Manages its Stresses with CEG’s Help

With the help of: New York Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NY MEP)

About

Precision Valve & Automation (PVA) is a manufacturer of fluid dispensing solutions and custom automation products. Its automated dispensing, coating, curing, board handling and printing systems are used by an array of industries, including from solar, semiconductor packaging, printed circuit board assembly, medical device manufacturing, and consumer electronics. The 29-year-old manufacturer, which recently relocated to Halfmoon, New York, from nearby Cohoes, employs 175.

The Challenge

In 2019, PVA was poised to increase its annual sales revenues by more than 40 percent after working with the Center for Economic Growth (CEG), part of the New York MEP and the MEP National Network™, on several initiatives. These initiatives, coupled with a lean kaizen training, set PVA on a course for rapid growth. That resulted in stress and pressure on the company’s operations, mostly due to inadequate documented processes, risk assessments, and metrics/key performance indicators in both productivity and growth areas.
CEG’s support as the Capital Region’s MEP Center over the past six years has been a vital contributor to our growth.  Their proactive approach before and during the COVID-19 pandemic helped us not only survive but thrive; the work was enabled by the success of the supply chain project and contributed to PVA being classified as an essential business and achieve the reported impacts.  Furthermore, this allowed us to keep 100% of our workforce engaged during the pandemic, and directly correlated to retaining additional sales of $10m that we possibly would have lost if we had to reduce our workforce to 25% per government guidelines that were issued.  We are grateful for the work done by the entire CEG team and we look forward to an ongoing relationship in the years to come.
— Frank Hart, Managing Director – Global Sales and Marketing

MEP's Role

CEG helped PVA secure $16,800 in National Grid Manufacturing Productivity Program (NGMPP) grant funding for initiatives that would address these stressors. CEG also connected PVA with CEG’s strategic partner, Relay Integrated Logistics & Solutions, and this project looked at key indicators of successful supply chains. It also focused on what strategy would be implemented at all facets of the supply chain to ensure that the growth of the company did not consume the supply chain thresholds.

Relay’s Larry Treen and Jeff Snow developed for PVA a Supplier Scorecard that enables the manufacturer to better track on-time delivery, vendor accuracy, purchase price variance and quality. The consultants also drafted policies and procedures that established a standardized system for rapid training/growth and scalable business continuity environment. This included supply chain work instructions for purchasing inventory, receiving, shipping, warehousing and cycle counting. It also included a method of formal corporate risk assessment for driving actions to promote both short- and long-term preventive/corrective actions and minimize/eliminate risk.

Created July 20, 2021, Updated April 1, 2022