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Lean Training Produces Off The Grid Results
With the help of: Impact Dakota
About
Founded in 2020, Vanna Conversions, LLC, (Vanna) is a family-owned company based in West Fargo, North Dakota. Vanna builds custom camper vans and mobile medical units that are entirely off-grid functional and true four-season operational. Using the most advanced systems on the market, giving customers true four-season use, full off-grid functionality, and purpose-built vehicles. Core technologies include Victron Energy power systems and Eberspaecher Airtronic & Hydronic heaters.
Vanna’s vision is to build the most reliable off-grid, four-season vehicles using the world’s most advanced technology. Their mission reads, “The next generation of purpose-built, off-grid vehicles. Bring the world’s most advanced off-grid technology to the mobility and RV industry, combined with the most reliable vehicles, full custom interior finish, and exterior upgrades.” Vanna markets to the national camper market, high end off-road capable conversion vans, and medical vans. Their competitors are other camper manufacturers such as Winnebego, Sportsmobile, Vanworks, etc.
The Challenge
Vanna was interested in getting help with their proposed move to West Fargo, ND, from Moorhead, MN, and improving processes and streamlining production. The conversion van is a competitive market and Vanna's focus on the high end market allows for better margins if costs are contained. Impact Dakota, part of the MEP National Network™, was brought on board to help them with these costs of production to maximize profits and production levels to continue growing and producing high quality product at levels that can lead to future expansion.
Wendy has been a tremendous help in teaching Vanna how we can implement lean manufacturing tools within our company to drastically reduce waste and increase our production efficiency to meet our demand!
MEP's Role
Impact Dakota provided a five-day Lean Enterprise High Performance Manufacturing (LEHPM) training for four of their key production and management personnel. In addition, two of the participants took the certification test. Since very few of the employees had previous experience in lean principals, this training lead to increased communication and implementation of lean principals in their new facility with savings in time, increased productivity and increase in throughput on the production line.
The facility is now fully up and running with lean processes in nearly all areas. Going forward, Impact Dakota will be helping Vanna work on continuous improvement in other areas.