Whitewood benefits from lean manufacturing
By Heath E. Combs -- Furniture Today, October 17, 2009
THOMASVILLE, N.C. — Last year, dining, casual and occasional furniture source Whitewood Inds. turned to DavidsonWorks, Davidson Community College and North Carolina State University to collaborate on a training program focusing on lean manufacturing.
The customized program, supported with $37,500 in state funds, began in July 2008.
By that October, the company — which is at this week's High Point Market, in a showroom at 215 S. Main St. — started adopting lean manufacturing practices. These have resulted in estimated savings of more than $300,000, said Bryan Sprinkles, sales and marketing manager for Whitewood and its John Thomas Division.
In lean terms, the training — which focused on assembly operations and the finishing department — was a “kaizen event,” or something that sets up a continuous improvement process within an organization.
Sprinkles said the company has learned that customer demand must be the primary motivation for building better operations workflow.
“That sounds simple, but a standard manufacturing mentality — build more, faster, cheaper — often only hinders true customer service. We quickly learned that the easiest way for us was not necessarily the best way to grow our business,” he said.
The results can be measured. Whitewood has logged a 23% increase in production efficiency and is making more pieces per shift with fewer errors, Sprinkles said.
The company also has seen a 28% increase in space utilization, allowing it to warehouse more product in fewer square feet, and a 32% decrease in handling, meaning less time and transportation used to flow products from assembly to shipping.
In its warehouse, the company was racking its parts inventory two levels high but has moved to a three-level system and also has racks over aisles, serviced by new forklifts.
“We didn't have our racks on as many levels as our ceiling would permit us to. We just weren't utilizing our space to the best of our ability,” Sprinkles said.
In addition to the training, Whitewood moved equipment to make it more accessible, modified its software to better control its order submissions, and created new monitoring systems to evaluate product movement through its facilities.
Sprinkles said the assembly process has benefited from what is called a “one piece flow” and has become more efficient by initiating a “pull system” of materials. The processes are cornerstones of the lean manufacturing concept pioneered by Toyota.
In a one-piece flow system, parts are assembled one part at a time and no parts move down the line until they are requested. A pull style inventory is maintained by letting orders dictate production schedules, instead of forecasting a production schedule that leaves the company with excess inventory.
“We're only producing what we have as sold goods,” Sprinkles said. “Before, it was more like a supermarket — build and fill the warehouse with products and push them through sales efforts, thus trying to create more customer demand.”
He said transportation was a relatively easy area to target. The company's various warehouses had created too much handling of product. By consolidating three warehouses into a single facility in High Point, Whitewood cut its handling time and cost dramatically.
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