Company Background:
Harvey Building Products began in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1961 and quickly established itself as one of the most respected building products corporations. In 2006 they moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire where today the company resides in a 380,000 square foot facility and employs 404. Harvey Building Products serves the building and construction industry with the manufacture of high-performing, custom-made windows and doors.
Situation:
“One of the measurables of our KPI’s is called Units Per Person or UPP,” said Matt Bouvier, Continuous Improvement Manager for Harvey Building Products. “We were shooting for a KPI of 13, but the UPP was around 8-1/2 to 9. So we weren’t making the money as we hoped. We knew there was a lot of meat on the bone to go after and looking at the line itself we saw how unorganized it was. All of this contributed to having trouble meeting on-time delivery.” He realized quickly these were not acceptable outcomes for sustainability and growth.
Solution:
At a previous job Matt held in Massachusetts, he worked with the MASS MEP. Then through a colleague at Harvey Building Products he found out New Hampshire has an MEP Center, NH MEP.
Matt reached out to NH MEP, and with the help of a NH MEP Project Manager, an on-site Lean Training and Implementation Program was developed to meet the needs of Harvey Building Products.
The intent of the Lean training was to educate as well as mentor the employees at Harvey Building Products in Principles of Lean, Value Stream Mapping, and the execution of Kaizen events. The introduction to the Principles of Lean would be the foundation and building blocks for success at the client’s site. Shortly thereafter, a Value Stream Mapping Training Event targeting a specific product family and led to Kaizen training events that were focused on targeting and eliminating the waste discovered during the Value Stream Mapping process.
This hands-on experience with the mentoring role of selected individuals employed by the client would create the workforce skills necessary to recreate and expand the Lean Continuous Improvement focused culture.
Results:
“We saw immediate results on our day-to-day throughput,” said Bouvier. “We were able to meet on-time delivery consistently. Our KPI of how we measure throughput as UPP went up and we were consistently hitting the 13 we budgeted for. Also 6 months from when we started the Kaizen to 6 months afterwards from a UPP standpoint we did $60,000 better than what we were doing before in costs associated with output versus the people producing it.”
The following results for Harvey Industries can be credited to having gone through NH MEP’s Lean Implementation Program:
- $1,120,000 in new sales over the last 12 months
- Retained sales of $250,000 over the last 12 months that otherwise would have been lost
- Added 1 new job over the last 12 months
- Retained 8 jobs over the last 12 months
- Cost savings of $62,436 in labor, materials energy, overhead or other areas that would otherwise have been spent in the past 12 months
- Increased investment of $1,000 in plant or equipment over the last 12 months
- Increased investment of $1,000 in information systems and software over the last 12 months
- Increased investment of $5,000 in workforce practices or employee skills over the last 12 months
“Harvey Windows and Doors greatly appreciates NH MEP coming out to our facility in Londonderry NH. Their eagerness to learn our process and coach us through activities such as value stream mapping, waste reduction and other lean tools helped us achieve our productivity goals fast and effectively. We look forward to partnering up with them on other initiatives in the future.”
