IET, Inc - Four million reasons to enhance efficiency.

IET, Inc.
3539 Glendale Ave
Toledo, Ohio 43614

www.ieteng.com

Case Study 1-05498

Four million reasons to enhance efficiency.

Working with IET, Sunrise Windows enhanced production efficiency and eliminated the need to build an additional facility – a $4,000,000 savings in capital avoidance. IET solutions also generated $550,000 in annual labor savings.

The Customer

A manufacturer of vinyl replacement windows, Sunrise Windows is a 2006 Crystal Award winner for Most Innovated Plant by Window & Door magazine.

"IET helped us find the innovative solution for our specific production and warehousing challenges and delivered a tremendous return on investment."

The Challenge

Before investing in a new facility, Sunrise Windows wanted to maximize the productivity potential of their existing plant. They partnered with IET to evaluate every aspect of the production process including ways to improve the utilization of people, equipment, warehousing and space. Five measures of production were targeted for improvement:

Manufacturing lead-time
Manufacturing quality
Final installation quality
Labor productivity
Production capacity

The Solution

By streamlining each product line into separate manufacturing lines and implementing lean manufacturing systems to improve production speed, manufacturing lead-time was reduced from 3.7 days to below 4 hours.

By redesigning the racking systems and enhancing cube utilization, warehousing capacity increased from 3,640 units to 4,704 units, plus material handling and labor utilization have been simplified.

Two new operations were added to the current facility (requiring no plant expansion) including a glass inspection system that electronically alerts suppliers immediately if there is a quality issue with glass received. Errors are caught earlier, avoiding rework.

Manufacturing capacity increased by 72 percent without facility expansion.