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December 6, 2011

Dr. Ric Hollstrom (left), owner of OrthoCare Labs, discusses the company’s products with Derek Woodham, Georgia Tech regional manager. Woodham helped the company redesign its manufacturing process to increase production.

Customer Profile

OrthoCare Labs produces custom orthotics – shoe inserts – for athletes, diabetics and others.  The company receives orders from physicians, who either make digital measurements of patients’ feet or use physical casts, such as plaster molds. Workers then use precision routers to make wooden replicas of the patients’ feet on which the plastic orthotics are formed. Each order is custom made; the company currently produces approximately 250 sets of orthotics per day.

Situation

The company was preparing to move into a new facility, and needed assistance with developing the most efficient process configuration.  It had been using a traditional batch manufacturing process, but this was inefficient and sometimes led to mix-ups in the custom orders. The owner had heard of lean techniques, and wanted to set up the new facility to take advantage of lean processes, boost quality and improve turnaround time.

Solution

Derek Woodham, a regional manager in Georgia Tech’s Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), spent time understanding how the orthotics are produced and listened to the owner’s plans for growth. He recommended replacing the old batch process with flow cell techniques in which products are produced continuously by a small team.  The cell-based process provides better communications and feedback to head off quality issues, and reduces potential confusion among orders.  Adopting the process allowed most orders to be completed within a day – compared to a week with the old process.  The cell techniques also allowed the company to expand production by simply replicating cells.

Results

• A sales increase of $1.1 million annually
• Cost savings of $230,000
• Investment of $160,000
• A production increase of more than 200 percent
• Creation of seven new jobs

View the full success story.

Customer Profile

Established in 1843, the family-owned Hollingsworth & Vose produces engineered papers and nonwovens. The company sells its products in more than 80 countries and operates manufacturing facilities and research and development laboratories in the Americas, Europe and Asia. More than 1,000 people are employed at Hollingsworth & Vose worldwide including the Georgia facility.

Situation

The Hollingsworth & Vose headquarters established a number of corporate objectives, including adoption of lean and quality processes. The facility in Hawkinsville, which primarily manufactures non-woven media for the filtration market, also needed assistance with the recertification of ISO 9001, an international quality management system, and AS 9100, a quality management standard specifically written for the aerospace industry.

Solution

Hollingsworth & Vose sought assistance from a long-trusted ally, Georgia’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a unit of Georgia Tech that has served as a technical resource for more than 20 years. Assistance was provided in a number of areas, including a facility layout, a corporate-wide value stream mapping exercise and training in lean manufacturing principles. Hollingsworth & Vose has furthered its lean education by engaging in two additional EI2 initiatives: the Lean Consortium and the Group Lean Implementation Project. Quality specialists conducted a gap audit to identify areas of improvement, developed an implementation plan and trained the staff in quality issues and internal auditing.

Results

• Increased productivity by five percent
• Improved knowledge of lean principles in company’s workforce

Customer Profile

Hoshizaki America is a manufacturer of commercial ice makers, dispensers, refrigerators and related projects with facilities located in Peachtree City and Griffin, Ga.

Situation

The company had labored for a number of years to sustain a continuous improvement system. These earlier improvement efforts had focused on large projects using a team-based approach, which highlighted both the existence of activities that didn’t add value and the invisible walls between departments. For competitive reasons, the company felt the need for improvement was critical.

Solution

An in-house lean simulation training class was held for executives and other key personnel, helping the company map current and future value streams, identify improvement techniques, develop a lean strategy and plan application of specific lean techniques. Lean specialists from Georgia Tech’s Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) proposed a series of kaizen rapid improvement events that produced results so remarkable that the company established a Kaizen Promotion Office. Hoshizaki has leveraged their learning and experience to implement 5S (sorting, straightening, shining, standardizing and sustaining) in each manufacturing area and relentlessly pursue improvement in all facets of their business.

Results

• Cost reduction of more than $7 million
• Productivity increases of 75 percent
• Kaizen Promotion Office established
• Increased employee engagement, with 2,700 ideas submitted last year

View the full success story.

Event details: May 5-9, 2012 • Orlando, Fla.

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Bottles of Terrapin beer are bottled at the company’s 40,000-square-foot facility in Athens, Ga.

Customer Profile

Terrapin Beer Company was born when two brewers, Brian “Spike” Buckowski and John Cochran, met while working together at a microbrewery in Atlanta. Terrapin introduced its first beer, the Rye Pale Ale in April of 2002. Six months later, only available on draft in Athens, Terrapin’s sole offering won the American Pale Ale Gold Medal at the 2002 Great American Beer Festival. Today, the nine-year-old company has a 40,000-square-foot brewing facility in Athens and employs 30 people.

Situation

With all of the beer company’s success, the two business partners had built the brand to a point where they could attract investors. In 2006, they were finally able to open their brewery in Athens. As the business grew, Buckowski and Cochran favored investing in the brand’s rapid growth but experienced philosophical differences with their investment group.

Solution

Rob Ginn, a strategic business manager with Georgia’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, assisted Buckowski and Cochran with filling the company’s empty board seat and locating appropriate legal counsel. He also helped them with reviewing and finally closing on an investment contract that allowed the two founders to buy out the original investment group while retaining the equity they had developed in the company.

Results

• Remains an independent brewery after receiving a loan from Miller-owned Tenth and Blake Beer Co.
• Currently produces 18,000 barrels of beer annually, equal to $5 million in sales
• Undergoing a $3.2 million capital expansion plan

View the full success story.

Customer Profile

Parents Donna and Joe Lefcourt created Maddie’s World after their first-hand experience with premature birth. Their daughter, Maddie, faced a number of developmental issues that had the potential to affect her motor skills. That’s when Donna’s motherly intuition gave her the idea to form a company that could help children like Maddie. Maddie’s World manufactures appropriately-sized toys – a critical way babies’ motor skills grow and develop – for premature and small infants.

Situation

Lefcourt noticed that every time she put the toy in her daughter’s hand, she would drop it, either because of the toy’s size or the weight. After exhausting all local and online retail sources for toys suitable for her daughter, Lefcourt was seized by the entrepreneurial spirit and decided to make her own line of specialty toys – but where should she start? She began researching the market for toys for premature babies and learned from the March of Dimes that more than 500,000 babies are born prematurely every year in the United States. She also researched baby toy companies both nationally and internationally.

Solution

Lefcourt attended an inventors’ workshop being offered by Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) and afterward began working with Ed Murphy, a project manager with the Georgia Entrepreneur and Small Business Outreach program, a partnership between EI2 and the University of Georgia Small Business Development Center that delivers services to entrepreneurs and small businesses in rural Georgia. Murphy assisted Lefcourt with researching manufacturers that could make her line of specialty baby toys and coached her on the kinds of questions she needed to ask. Murphy continued to assist Lefcourt with developing a business plan and her pricing structure.

Results

• Selected Peliton Plastics, a plastic injection molding company in Valdosta, Ga., to begin making the first three toys – a rattle, a teether and dexterity/motor skill toy
• Hired a local marketing professional to help design company logo and revamp business name
• Donates a portion of sales to the local Children’s Miracle Network where the toys are purchased

View the full success story.