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Precision Machine & Manufacturing Leadership and Growth
With the help of: Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership
About
The Challenge
PMM recently made leadership changes to improve oversight, production, and sales processes. They established a corporate strategy, bolstered by new leadership, and identified significant top-line growth opportunities. In order to take advantage of these growth opportunities, they sought OMEP's support to elevate their manufacturing operation strategy. The PMM team hoped to encourage employees to engage in continuous improvement by establishing a lean manufacturing structure. This would foster employee engagement and problem solving, eliminating the suboptimization of individual work cells.
OMEP is AWESOME!!!! I have been working with OMEP for 25+ years and there is no finer organization to help with the implementation of lean manufacturing principles improve throughput decrease waste/cost and improve our overall operation! I anticipate OMEP's involvement in Precision Machine & Manufacturing to increase over the next 12-24 months and I welcome the significant improvements and discoveries that will be realized as we look to the future! Lastly Rick Price is absolutely fantastic and Mike Vanier is a tremendous asset to our organization! Mike's value to Precision is immeasurable and I cannot say how much I appreciate his help and involvement! Thank you!
MEP's Role
To establish the lean continuous improvement manufacturing structure OMEP, part of the MEP National Network™, evaluated the current facility layout using value stream mapping. Current equipment viability and future equipment needs, and integration were considered as part of this evaluation. The OMEP team relied on industry best practice tools for manufacturing improvement. These include conducting a facility layout, line balancing, application of takt time (paced line), in-process inspection, point of use inventory and Kanban (replenishment) systems, inventory control limiters, 5S (workplace organization) and set-up reduction.
The team established visual controls of the production process and facility. To support workforce engagement, training efficiency, and employee retention, the team created and deployed standard work documentation and revision control protocols. CEO Don Lindsey focused primarily on growing and fostering a culture of collaboration with all team members, including sales, engineering and production staff. He worked alongside his staff in all departments for extended periods of time to demonstrate his commitment to the team and understand their daily challenges. All production employees participated in OMEP’s lean fundamentals cohort to gain a thorough understanding of continuous improvement principles. Manufacturing data input and output requirements were collected for future ERP migration.