Problem: Employees noticed that door and frame parts were moving too far during production and that they were walking in circles to complete projects.

Solution: With a little guidance in lean concepts and U-shaped work cells from the management team, the employees were able to take this project and run with it. They were enabled to reorganize the area so that frame parts traveled very little during production. By moving the storage location of the doors, this also improved the door assembly to shipping experience. Doors are now being stored and assembled directly in front of the aisle that carries them to shipping. This also allowed us to create space in their area by condensing workstations that were spread out much more than needed and utilize the reclaimed space for a forklift aisle.

Improvements & Waste Elimination: This reorganization also helped reduce waste of movement and storage in our cabinet shop. We were able to eliminate the need for a forklift area in the cabinet area by moving it to the extra space we created in the door and frame assembly area. This freed up about 2000 sq ft between all these areas and lays their area out more efficiently.