Manufacturer of Durable Medical Equipment. Stairlifts, Vertical Platform Lifts, Vehicle Lifts
www.bruno.com

Challenge: 
Past attempts at implementing lean manufacturing in Stairlift assembly to improve production throughout had yielded minimal results and frustrated employees.

Process: 
Focused on production flow in stairlift assembly. Working with an employee team, a new cellular assembly process using single-piece processing was designed and implemented in 3 months. Upon implementation, proper work methods and behaviors were continually reinforced and work-flow imbalances addressed.

Result: 
During the first month following implementation, maintained customer lead time and on-time delivery during a major product promotion initiative that exceeded forecast by about 10%. Maintaining delivery time during a promotion had not previously been accomplished.

Experience:  
"One of Cadent Resource’s key strengths is their ability to work hand-in-hand with a team of production operators to get their ideas incorporated into the new workflow. They did this through a series of structured meetings, during which they used their lean manufacturing knowledge and experience to propose different concepts and layouts to the team, while incorporating the team’s input on necessary details. This resulted in quick buy-in to the changes, since everyone was involved. In addition to identifying key metrics to enable continued performance monitoring, Cadent maintained their proposed schedule, allowing a very successful implementation to take place as planned. I would not hesitate to recommend use of Cadent’s consulting services."

Tom Jacobson, Chief Operating Officer