One of North America’s leading innovators in the energy efficient window and doors was facing rising production costs and an increasing backlog of projects to be completed. An initial assessment was requested, but with the backlog of work, it took over a year to get it scheduled.
The Assessment identified the following opportunities:
- Execution metrics were misaligned with planned business performance
- Work planning and floor execution lacked coordination, prioritizing easier projects over critical ones
- Static staffing models failed to proactively reallocate resources to address bottlenecks
- Root causes of rework and errors were neither understood nor measured
- Silos persisted due to tensions and misaligned communication on expectations, needs, and priorities
- Excessive scrap was produced without identifying common causes or developing resolutions
Carpedia partnered with the client to transform the culture, ease tensions between business groups, and enhance the predictability of weekly labor unit production to meet annual growth targets.
- Developed area-specific units of measure to provide meaningful metrics for front-line employees
- Enhanced leadership’s problem-solving behaviors to address issues in real-time and established processes to escalate variances caused by other groups
- Created a dynamic staffing model to reallocate resources to constraints, ensuring smooth WIP flow through production areas
- Improved communication, planning, and prioritization between business groups, aligning the right people with the right projects at the right time
- Removed deadstock items and consolidated products to maximize material utilization
- Conducted project post-mortem reporting to identify disconnects between planned and actual material costs
- Performed root cause analyses of common rework types to drive resolutions
The Results
- 1.8:1 Return on Investment and $726,000 annualized savings (labor and material)
- 34% increase in weekly labor unit output
- 16% decrease in labor cost per labor unit and 17% decrease in hours per labor unit
- 37% decrease in rework hours per labor unit
