Five-Year Relationship Yields Tremendous Gains for Accra-Fab

Company Profile

Located in Liberty Lake, WA, Accra-Fab provides top quality custom metal fabrication and manufacturing for companies throughout the world. With its extensive equipment, innovative design and precision manufacturing techniques, Accra-Fab can perform any type of metal fabrication. The company was founded in 1979 and employs nearly 200 people.

Situation

Accra-Fab was struggling to survive with the competitive pressures of offshore manufacturing versus domestic cost containment. It needed to maintain its bottom line and keep its team employed. in 2008, the company sought assistance from Impact Washington, a NIST MEP affiliate. With Impact Washington's help, Accra-Fab planned to implement lean training and lean manufacturing principles and increase profitability while maintaining its valued “Made in the USA” and “Made in Washington” status.

Solution

After assisting Accra-Fab in building a three- and five-year strategic plan that identified resource needs and a timeline for implementation, Impact Washington brought in a highly trained and effective consulting team to guide Accra-Fab through its lean process development. The team from Accra-Fab discovered new methods for reducing average lead time and dropping per-unit manufacturing cost significantly. In 2010 the Impact Washington project manager sought and won ecology grant dollars to assist the company in funding the project and maintaining the needed guidance to ensure success. He worked with state agencies to include an environmental “lean and green” initiative, which brought substantial cost savings along with long-term environmental advantages. Accra-Fab’s environmental wastewater reclamation project has been particularly successful.

Since 2008, Impact Washington and Accra-Fab have continued their collaborative efforts and have evolved the relationship to include more advanced lean training, long-term strategic planning, policy development and deployment, innovation engineering, and leadership and cultural development. The relationship has allowed Accra-Fab to keep its manufacturing in the US and, more directly, the state of Washington.