News Articles

NC State is leaning on businesses to cut fat
By Mike Grizzard
The Daily Reflector
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

KINSTON - Getting lean could help fatten North Carolina's economy to the tune of $1 billion by 2010. At least that's the goal of the 1B4NC campaign spearheaded by NC State University's Industrial Extension Service (IES).

The premise is simple - cut waste and operate more efficiently.

Southern Vinyl Manufacturing in Kinston bought into the concept dubbed "lean manufacturing" and is seeing dramatic results.

"Lean has totally revolutionized how we do business," company founder and co-owner Dean Ervin said. "... Lean really has changed our lives."

Southern Vinyl on Monday was recognized by the IES, an arm of NC State that supports business in the workplace, for reporting a $2.4 million economic gain on a lean project. Southern invested $28,000 in a three-year span.

"Plants who operate more efficiently are going to be more long-term sustainable employers," said Terri Helmlinger Ratcliff, executive director of the ISE and assistant vice chancellor for extension and engagement. "We have used this campaign to identify distinguishing companies who have really embraced and inculcated lean manufacturing and other continuous improvement processes as a way of doing business every day."

Southern Vinyl, which sells PVC fencing and railing to building professionals, opened as a one-man operation in 1997 and has experienced steady growth, moving from a 1,500-square-foot building to a 15,000-square-foot facility in 2002. But filling orders was a tedious and long process. So was inventory, which became a two-day effort at the end of each month and required a one-day shutdown.

Ervin and Rod Matthews, who became co-owners in 2003, took the first steps to making a change by taking a class on lean manufacturing taught by IES specialists David Ball and David Harrawood at Lenoir Community College. LCC then partnered Southern Vinyl with NC State.

The lean manufacturing concept was first conceived by Toyota Motor Co. in the 1970s to improve efficiency and eliminate waste in automotive production. The Lean Enterprise Institute, a not-for-profit education and research organization, defines lean manufacturing as "a business system that requires less human effort, space, capital and time to make products with fewer defects than typically found in a standard manufacturing setting."

In almost every area, Southern Vinyl did not stack up.

"The process was all messed up," Matthews said.

Operations now are down to a science. Employees were part of the solution, bringing ideas of how to make their jobs more efficient. The result has been more satisfied workers and customers, Matthews said.

"What waste is is non-value-added work," he said. "... What you're trying to do is work on value-added work. Now that we’ve got lean going, we've tripled our productivity."

Southern Vinyl also has tripled its workforce to about 30.

Some of the major changes:

• Raw materials that once were stored in huge stacks in no particular arrangement are now kept in smaller quantities and organized. "Now everything is assigned a location," production manager Jared Tyndall said.
  
  Allen Cahoon, who had worked in a lean environment before coming to Southern to work in receiving, welcomed that change. "I knew it was wrong the way it was set up," he said.
• Cycle counts at the end of each day have made inventory now a two-hour job handled by Tyndall and Cahoon.
• The work area is kept clean and uncluttered, allowing for better work flow.
• Production lines are set up with materials easily accessible, eliminating wasted movement. A pedometer showed one assembler walked five miles a day to collect materials. He now walks a half-mile. Streamlining the process also translates into quicker output - a porch rail kit that took 30 minutes to produce now is in a box in less than 2 minutes.
  
  "Before lean it took quite some time to actually get the product moving," production manager Aaron Myers said. "It could take and hour to two hours before we saw our first kit actually come off the line."
• A computer system for orders and communicating with customers has eliminated mounds of paper.
  
  "We went through tens and tens of thousands of pieces of paper," Matthews said. "... In the office, we've eliminated virtually all the paper."
• Bins at all work stations recycle scraps that are sold with the proceeds distributed to employees. The average check last year was about $1,000, Matthews said.

All the numbers add up to lean manufacturing working, but the process never ends, Matthews said. Southern Vinyl now has accounts in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia and recently signed its first national contract.

"This is what I call a race that has no finish," Matthews said. "... We're continuously working on how we're going to improve our processes and our flow."

"Quality before lean was not assured. ... We had to make sure that process was perfect. What we did with lean was figure out how to error-proof the process and make sure those kits were going out perfectly every single time."

Mike Grizzard can be contacted at mgrizzardcoxnc.com and
329-9580.