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Sturdi-Built Greenhouse Manufacturing Company
With the help of: Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership
About
The Challenge
Sturdi-Built was favored to work with OMEP’s Mr. Bob Cannon. Bob not only can train well, he is also very easy to work with, and offers his 30+ years of life and manufacturing experience to provide wise advice and counsel. Thank you Bob!
MEP's Role
OMEP, part of the MEP National Network™, applied their operational excellence and continuous improvement process to create a manufacturing strategy for Sturdi-Built. The manufacturing strategy included observations, recommendations, and best practices for Sturdi-Built to better manage operations, including training for lean manufacturing fundamentals. This training empowered all Sturdi-Built employees to find and solve manufacturing inefficiency and “waste”. OMEP exposed Sturdi-Built to new thinking and armed them with a mindset that would serve them long after OMEP’s project concluded.
OMEP created a value stream map of Sturdi-Built’s processes. This value stream map created a new energy among the Sturdi-Built team and resulted in a flurry of ideas of where and how to make improvements, some incremental and some transformational. Sturdi Built's team next received training in 5S, a workplace methodology that helps create a safe, clean, neat arrangement of the workplace and provides a specific location for everything and eliminates items not required. 5S helped Sturdi-Built to improve workplace efficiency, safety and morale.
Sturdi-Built’s manufacturing efficacy improved about 20% just by changing how they worked. Leveraging the 5S work, Sturdi Built freed up much-needed manufacturing space, including as much as 30% in the initial focus areas. More importantly, the team was left with the skills and a plan to continue incremental improvements. The financial benefit will lead to significant cost savings through improving work flow, and reducing material and labor waste. Sturdi-Built is poised for continued success over the long term, thanks to their new continuous improvement culture from OMEP.