Company B was engaged in a very competitive market and needed to make some significant changes in order to continue to maintain it's #1 position. Since the products were in a mature to declining market segment the most likely area for improvement appeared to be manufacturing excellence. The following are the major items that were done to drive the needed improvements:

• Measure the value added, non-value added, and queue time for entire process
• Re-engineer certain processes to match the needs of the total process
• Procure certain key pieces of equipment to balance the line
• Re-layout the entire process flow

Obviously this was a big undertaking and it took almost a year to complete. The results were amazing. Here is a list of the major outcomes of the effort:

• Total cycle process time reduced from ~ 3 days to < 8 hours
• Overall Yield increased to > 98%
• Capacity increased by > 30% (in same space)
• Inventory turns increased from ~ 20 to > 50
• Reduction in WIP to almost zero
• Build to Order was possible (almost no finished goods)