Home | About Maine MEP | Upcoming Events | Success Stories | Partners & Resources | News | Board of Directors Contact Us | Enterprise Management | Performance Based Training | Supply Chain Management | Innovation Services Maine MEP Has Major Impact on Bingham Manufacturer A manufacturer of unfinished pine furniture, AM Wood Designs Inc. has been in business since December of 2000. While most of the company’s products are sold to the Mill Stores, Richard Casey, owner, is always looking for additional customers for his products. "We were having problems in our production flow," Casey said, "and we were constantly fighting to get to zero inventory and on-time production, but we just couldn’t seem to get there." Knowing things just weren’t improving as he hoped - and realizing his company was having cash flow problems because of it – Casey contacted the Maine MEP. "The project managers came right in, rolled up their sleeves and got right down to work," Casey said. "They knew what they were talking about, were professional and quickly sold my crew on what they were hoping to accomplish." They went further than that, however, Casey said. "These guys actually helped us move our machinery to new locations and worked to clean up our production lines and processes." But MEP’s product managers did more than push machinery around. They also retrained the crew and completely changed the way Casey and his employees do their work. "We used to do lengthy production runs," Casey explained. "We might make 200 deacon’s benches at once. That meant making 300 backs, then moving on to 300 seats and then 300 sides, and so forth. "That was fine three weeks down the road when it all came together, but there was a lot of wasted time and effort until we got to that point," he said. Also, if something went wrong in the quality process, the company would be sitting on 300 unusable parts. MEP changed all that. Now the company produces just enough finished products to fill a palette. The workers are kept busy at all times, there is no down time waiting for parts to be completed, inventory has been reduced and the company is zeroing in on on-time production. "This is just a better way of doing things," Casey said. "Our quality is way up, our on-time delivery numbers are up, our through-put time has decreased and shipment cycle times have decreased by 21.4 percent, from 7 days to 5.5 days." Best of all, Casey said he is now ready to discuss the possibility of producing goods for other wholesalers who have been clamoring for his products. MEP’s project managers implemented the Time Wise Principles of Lean Manufacturing resulting in a scheduling system that limited the work in progress. "With the same amount of labor and increased raw-stock usage, we are producing 21 percent more gross product than we were at the start of the MEP project," Casey said. While that translates into a considerable amount of money, Casey knows there is still much work to be done. "The Lean Manufacturing training we received has been invaluable," he said, "but we have a turnover of help and there’s no one on the floor qualified to do that training. "Obviously, I don’t want things to slip back," he added. "The methods the MEP used made sense and I want to keep moving forward with those suggestions."