Profit Improvement in a Time of Growth

The Challenge:

Carpedia was engaged to increase labor productivity in the field, pre-fabrication shops and indirect support areas.  Danforth was poised for a period of rapid expansion and the leadership team chose to partner with Carpedia to fully capitalize on future growth.

The Results:

• Achieved profitability improvements that are generating an ROI of 4.6 to 1.
• Decreased direct labor cost by 14%.
• Improved fabrication shop efficiency by 5%.
• Decreased indirect costs by 8%.
• Offset annual wage rate increase (i.e. 3%).
• Introduced an integrated project planning and labor scheduling system that aligns Project Managers with field Foremen.
• Achieved on-time completion for all major milestones on the largest project in Danforth history.

Specific actions taken to achieve the results included:

• Implemented a series of strategies for decreasing rework in the field.
• Introduced standard equipment/materials sets for different types of common work.
• Introduced new equipment/materials storage and inventory management techniques on the construction site.
• Optimized logistics for materials reception on larger job sites.
• Standardized project planning and scheduling which reduced under-utilization of field labor.
• Re-oriented Estimating and Drafting focus on timely acquisition of required process inputs to prevent downstream waste.

The Client Experience:

“Our business is currently experiencing a period of growth and we engaged Carpedia with the intent of fully leveraging future opportunities.  Although we had a pre-existing continual improvement focus, the practical reality was that our management team was too often occupied with day-to-day responsibilities to dedicate the time required to generate truly significant and sustainable change.  The Carpedia project team provided us with the additional resources that we needed to properly identify initiatives and implement them in a comprehensive and timely nature.  The program has played out according to plan and I am pleased to confirm that we are on track to realize the promised benefits.”

Chairman & CEO, John W. Danforth Company