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Sun Surveillance Increases Jobs and Sales following Lean Office Process Training and SCMEP’s Competitiveness Review
With the help of: South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP)
About
Sun Surveillance, located in Spartanburg, SC, is a manufacturer of solar power wireless camera systems. The company built their first prototype in 2003 and officially formed as a business in 2004. While they have expertise in solar systems, they also have expertise in camera and wireless systems. Solutions that are guaranteed to operate 24/7/365 with no down time or loss of operations earned Sun Surveillance the reputation of being the world’s leading manufacturer of solar-powered wireless camera systems.
The Challenge
In 2018 SCMEP, part of the MEP National Network™, began working with Sun Surveillance to develop an automated quotation and tracking system. The new system allowed for a web capable local server interface to permit multiple user level revisions. This process created significant opportunity for office process improvements but was limited in scope. To allow the company to advance their sales efforts, the process had been expanded to include additional options and capabilities. To fully utilize the system upgrades, the staff needed to be completely retrained on the process.
SCMEP has been a huge resource for us and we anticipate exponential growth as a result in the near future.
MEP's Role
SCMEP worked with the quote system developer to conduct the upgrade and redesign training. Starting with the quotation process development, lean process development and upgrade training for the user was performed. Next was developing an integrated system connected to Quick Books for constant cost updating and integrators for online ordering. Over 208 hours of hands-on and facilitation training was completed. The average time to prepare a quote has gone from 1-3 weeks, with a single person being able to provide engineering data, to a 10-15-minute process, with engineering data being automatically developed within the system. SCMEP also completed a competitiveness review to develop plans needed to advance and transform the company through a lean development of systems and processes. Sun Surveillance has now embarked on creating management systems based on lean principles and reducing waste in their operations.