Lean Success Story

Hiram Company Finds Big Profits in Maine MEP Technical Assistance

New England Castings foundry president owner, Walter Butler, recently agreed to provide components and sub-assemblies to a railroad hardware manufacturer that provides products for a major city subway system. The value of Butler’s purchase orders for the subway system job is in excess of $500,000 over a 12-month period.

New England Castings, an investment-casting foundry that uses only environmentally friendly water-based slurries in the production of its shells, had to consider adding 3,000 square feet to the existing of 9,000 square feet facility. However, he wanted to be sure the current space was being used as efficiently as possible.

The company engaged Maine MEP to implement the Time Wise Principles of Lean training and conducted several rapid improvement workshops throughout the factory, focusing on organizing and labeling the materials in the area in order to save 20 percent of the work time, and to gain back 50 percent of the usable space for manufacturing processes. In one instance, a task that normally took 45 minutes was reduced to 15 minutes, and 4,000 feet of traveling throughout the facility each day was eliminated.

“The upshot of all this,” said Butler, “was that I found that saving all that space allowed me to delay my building addition. Best of all, saving all that time allowed me to consider bidding on the New York and Connecticut jobs because I knew we now could deliver the goods on time.

“In addition, because of MEP’s help, I now have a good chance to become a substantial supplier for a northeastern state’s project to retrofit all its rail cars,” Butler said.