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Flowers and Improvements that Last Forever
With the help of: University of Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership (UUMEP) Center
About
Founded in 2018 in Ogden, Utah, Forever Floral helps people express beautiful moments with eco-friendly wooden flowers that last forever. Their best-selling products include bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres. Due to many tastes in the marketplace, they produce a wide range of products, including different colors, arrangements, and sizes.
The Challenge
The company experienced challenges with meeting a rapidly growing customer demand. With so many orders and so much variety, Forever Floral experienced wide ranging variation with their on-time delivery. In 2022, they reached out to Impact Utah, a sub-recipient of the Utah MEP and part of the MEP National Network™, to get help with a rapid improvement event (kaizen).
The improvement came in time for Mother's Day, one of the largest ordering periods of the year. We are grateful for the resources provided by the Utah MEP. This project was another relationship builder for us. They are excited to help recognize many more mothers this year.
MEP's Role
The project focused on creating flow with the Forever Floral process. A large backlog accumulated in the middle of the process. Additionally, success at the end of the process largely depended on a handful of team members knowing how to assemble very wide-ranging different product options. The results of the kaizen project created a process to create a flow so that once the order started, it continuously went through value-added steps until the final order shipped. The productivity in the entire process increased by a factor of three.
Created June 9, 2022