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Mold-Masters Journey into Lean |
Customers Reaping the Rewards from
Mold-Masters Journey into Lean
Chicago, USA -
Mold-Masters Limited, the global leader in the manufacture of leading edge
Hot Runner Solutions, recently announced that its ability to deliver hot runner systems more
quickly than ever is at an all time high due to its adoption of Lean Manufacturing practices
and its integration of multiple manufacturing processes. In 2005, the company embarked on
what Jonathon Fischer, President of Mold-Masters has come to call ‘the journey into
lean” “We approached this project from a grass roots level” Fischer said “this effort was
never going to work from a top down perspective. Our sales were increasing dramatically
and our production capacity had to keep pace.” The company approached its shop floor
personnel to drive this change with the attitude that no one knew their manufacturing better
and the program took on a life of its own.
“We literally had staff offering up opportunities for improvement and supervisors proactively
lobbying to be the next department to undergo the process.” says Kathleen Engberg, Lean
Project Leader. “Once each department saw the flow improvements through their area the
attitude was infectious and really quite exciting to be part of. We literally redesigned our
shop floor from a traditional manufacturing platform to a cell based advanced manufacturing
entity focusing on the value stream. In one case one of our nozzles was traveling 326 feet
during its manufacturing life, now it is 50 ft.”
Through this exercise and the resulting increased capacity utilization Mold-Masters was able
to develop a dynamic delivery system which upon analysis showed products with
combinations of five manifold styles, four product lines, eight gating methods delivered in
under three weeks sometimes in as few as three days. |
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“This has been a huge boost to our
customers.” says Mr. Fischer “and we feel this is just the beginning at this point we foresee
that we will continue to set the industry standard for fast, on-time delivery. We continue to expand our manufacturing capacity across our international manufacturing network and continue to seek out synergies within our organization.” |
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