Innovation Program Success Story

Universal Forest Products Testimonial
“Making Lean the Universal Language”

Universal Forest Products (UFP) has become a major supplier to several markets and is the largest manufacturer of engineered roof systems and a leading producer of pressure treated lumber nation wide. Given the size of UFP operations, it is not surprising that UFP is also the largest customer of North America’s mills. The strategic planners in its Chandler, Arizona facility decided to improve their corporate philosophy to make improvements in the way they operated the business. The main objective of improvement was customer focused, with an emphasis on improving on-time delivery to all customers.

To accomplish this strategy, UFP partnered with Time Wise Management Systems (TWMS) and the Arizona Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Arizona MEP) to implement a lean assessment. As a result of the assessment, UFP was awarded an H-1B grant, funded by the US Department of Labor and administered by Northern Arizona Council of Governments to assist with training expenses. Since most of the production team is non-English speaking, the project team implemented the use of videotaping to film the processes the team wanted to improve. Videotaping helped illustrate the benefits of maintaining changes and improvements made during various phases of Lean and helped transcend the language barrier. Following this breakthrough, the Arizona MEP team was able to design a Lean implementation program that gave UFP Phoenix the tools they needed and skills to use the tools.

By implementing a Kaizen event to reorganize their yard, they eliminated waste in their processes and made the procedures more visual and convenient for the employees. In 2006, Universal had a 63% on time delivery rate. The goal was to improve this by 20% to a target of 75% on time delivery. Thus far, USP has seen on time delivery increase to 77%. UFP is already ahead of their goal in just two months and continue to see more improvements every day.

“The ultimate goal is for Universal to become adept enough at using lean tools like Value Stream Mapping and Kaizen, and to use them on their own. We are trying to tailor things to fit our [UFP] applications and standardize so that everyone clearly understands. The lean tools that Arizona MEP has taught [us] have become a template and now Universal needs to personalize them and keep them flexible so we can focus on the processes. This will be a lasting experience for us since it will be ongoing. Now we have been empowered to continue the process on our own.” Donnie McDonald, Plant Manager, United Forest Products