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Custom Patch Hats Hires Industry Expansion Solutions for Guidance to Optimize Their Rapidly Expanding Business
With the help of: North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NCMEP)
About
The Challenge
“We had some light manufacturing here, and we had our shipping and receiving departments there. We had some production, and we had some admin, scattered. We created a bit of a process, but when we had the opportunity to expand into another 15,000 square feet, we wanted to set it up efficiently and realized we needed help to do so. We wanted everything to run really smoothly. We understood the basics of how things should move in one direction. They shouldn't be scattered all over the place,” said Alexander. He continued, “We wanted someone to come in and say, this is smart, or this is stupid, and here's how to make it smart.”
Robert and Casey came in for one workday and were able to pull SO MUCH information out of our staff and process. They identified a critical area for improvement. This allowed us to make smarter investments in the technology we are currently developing & implementing. It was a very engaging and rewarding experience
MEP's Role
Custom Patch Hats hired Robert Crew, Regional Manager at NC State University Industry Expansion Solutions, part of the MEP National Network™, and Casey Olson, Product Specialist at NC State University Industry Expansion Solutions, to do a one-day lean flow site review of operations and lean opportunities assessments. Alexander explained, “One of the coolest parts of learning about NC State University Industry Expansion Solutions was having actual experts in manufacturing come in, walk our facility, and tell us the things we're doing right."
The Industry Expansion Solutions team was able to highlight that since Custom Patch Hats had grown so rapidly, they hadn’t taken time to standardize workflow. “Multiple people on the same team were trained in different ways and do the same process differently,” said Alexander. Other areas addressed were the need for data collection, the implementation of an ERP system, and supply chain optimization.