Justin and Michael Seibert knew that Athens, Georgia, was a place they wanted to lay down roots. After talking with a family friend who owned a sign manufacturing business, they determined their skill set and business outlook was a good match for the industry. So seven years ago they opened The Sign Brothers, a custom sign manufacturing business within the community.
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The Sign Brothers employs 13 people and offers a large variety of signs. From vehicle wraps to building signs to free-standing structures, each sign type requires a different time frame for production and a unique technique to produce. A few months ago they realized the large number of SKUs required for their product line were beginning to cause problems. The brothers knew it was important to get ahead of these issues to continue to thrive.
Situation
At the time, Justin and Michael were working with the University of Georgia’s Small Business Development Center on business initiatives and on The Sign Brothers’ processes. It was during one of these conversations that they were put in touch with Bill Nusbaum, the Northeast region manager for Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, and Paul Todd, project manager for the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) at Georgia Tech.
After an initial conversation Todd visited The Sign Brothers plant where he observed processes for several days and talked with many employees. He also took the team through a series of training exercises to demonstrate the basics of lean flow, including how to make changes that affect processes, why these changes are important, and the outcome the changes can have on a business.
Justin and Michael wanted to make a companywide effort to empower employees so they could initiate and participate in changes that would make a difference. They decided the most effective way to begin was with problems that were the easiest to fix and then work on issues that could have long-term effects on day-to-day operations.
Solution
One of the issues at The Sign Brothers was misplaced tools. The production and installation departments were sharing the same tools, causing instruments to be unavailable when needed. A second set was purchased and designated for the production room; the other set was assigned to the installers’ truck. This small change completely eliminated the problem.
The production manager was spending 30 minutes every morning developing a white board with details on which projects had been completed the day before and those that needed to be worked on that day. This process was time-consuming and allowed too great an opportunity for human error. The team wanted to eliminate the transposition errors that were causing jobs to get lost or behind schedule.
They began researching the concept of kanban boards, a visual aid to represent work items in the production process. They studied examples and interpreted them to meet their needs. By creating a temporary board with Post-it notes, they were able to visualize their process and conduct live tests, making changes as needed. Once the new system was established, they created a permanent color-coded magnetic board, where each magnet color represented a sales person and was moved across the board based on where that person’s project was within the process.
They used this board to further expand a visual management system. By creating a two-month calendar and entering and assigning deadlines to all jobs, they were able to more accurately tell customers when jobs would be finished. This reduced the divergence of projects in queue from eight percent of all projects to almost zero. Additionally this visual planning allowed for more accurate scheduling of annual projects, which cut completion time in half, from six weeks to three weeks.
Finally, the team tackled waste management within the organization. Due to the building’s layout, the dumpster and recycling bin were located far from the work area. This caused scrap to be piled high in trash cans that were emptied only when it was getting out of hand. As a solution, the team purchased a trailer that is kept at the back door as a holding area for trash. Twice a week they attach the trailer to a truck and drive it to the trash cans making it easy to keep work areas clean.
Currently, the brothers are reading The Toyota Way (McGraw-Hill, 2004) and are exploring ways to rearrange their floor plan and implement just-in-time production to reduce in-process inventory. Additionally, the team is breaking their production process into two tracks so different-sized orders can run on separate production lines, permitting coordinated lead times and a more organized system.
Results
Since meeting with the GaMEP, The Sign Brothers company has:
• Strategically solved problems and encouraged team members to make changes
• Eliminated issues with misplaced tools
• Been able to accurately tell customers when their jobs would be complete, including reducing repeat/annual projects from a six-week turnaround to three weeks
• Reduced projects getting lost or off-track in the queue from eight percent of all projects to almost zero
• Streamlined the process to move scrap from inside the building to the dumpster and recycling bin, eliminating pile up
• Begun to break their production lines into two tracks, allowing for smaller and easier signs to move through production more quickly than before, and establishing different lead times for each type of job
Testimonial
“Georgia Tech gave us some great ideas and some great advice,” says Justin. “By listening to them and implementing some small changes, we were able to make [an] immediate impact on our business.”
First published July 2014 on the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Program (GaMEP) website. GaMEP is a unit of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech.
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