Innovation Program Success Story

INNOVATION PROGRAM HELPS THOM. MOSER CABINETS CRAFT A NEW CULTURE

Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, a trusted producer of fine handcrafted wooden furniture, has boomed into a business with 190 employees, including over 95 craftspeople, and spans six showrooms around the country. With the company expanding, Colleen McCracken, CFO, along with the senior management team wanted to ensure they kept competitive in the industry without compromising the craft.

“We were at a good time to explore Lean, and wanted to do it the right way. So we called on the Maine MEP, who would perform a business assessment for us,” said McCracken. “We knew this would be an encompassing commitment, but we really wanted to make Lean part of our corporate culture and a way of life for us at Thos. Moser.”

Maine MEP assisted the company with their continual improvement initiative through the Maine MEP Technical Skills Training and Innovation Program, which is funded through the U.S. Department of Labor and administered through Coastal Counties Workforce Board.

“The results of the assessment made it incredibly clear where we needed to change,” added McCracken. Teams were trained in the TimeWise® Value Stream Mapping System, which shows process steps from start to finish and is key to identifying waste in a system. Next, Kaizen events, or quick bursts of activity are aimed to make small improvements at first, but would yield large gains in efficiency and productivity in the future.

Ms. McCracken and the Thos. Moser management team saw the value of organizational development skills as a complement to their lean training and as a primary focus for workforce development. The introduction of lean technologies created a need for leadership skills and interpersonal behaviors that lend themselves to team-based work.

The integration of the leadership and Lean skills training really brought out the voice of some employees at Thos. Moser. Some workers who had never offered up their opinion before were suddenly taking leadership.

“We were so happy with Maine MEP’s work that we will have on-going training programs to continue our progress and develop measurement systems to monitor our results,” said McCracken.