Durose is a thriving family business that manufactures a broad range of products made of steel. Their operations involve plasma cutting, bending, fitting, welding and painting of steel. An opportunity was identified that would have represented a $5 million dollar increase in their revenues, about a third overall expansion of their business. However, the company lacked the capacity to take on the additional business, and was even finding it difficult to supply their existing customers on time.
SatiStar performed an assessment of the company’s business operations and identified an opportunity to increase their productive capacity by over 50% without the need for significant capital investment. Opportunities were also identified in their production planning process that contributed greatly to their lack of on time delivery performance. A multi-faceted solution was implemented that included Lean Manufacturing concepts, better management of their bottleneck activities, and the development of a production reporting and inventory database system.

SatiStar worked with Durose to design and implement a simple business planning and production management tool that gave the client real control over their business operations. A Lean Manufacturing design was created and implemented that opened up one third of their factory floor for the production of new products. The Lean design, combined with the improved management of their bottlenecks provided the client with sufficient additional productive capacity to accept new business, while reducing order lead time and improving on time delivery.