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Hardel Mutual Plywood Reduces Maintenance Downtime by 10% Using Lean Manufacturing

Company Profile

Hardel Mutual Plywood is an industry leader in the plywood manufacturing industry. Located in Chehalis, Washington, they currently employ 210 people.

Situation

Hardel Mutual Plywood felt that Lean Manufacturing could help them increase productivity
in their maintenance department, and reduce maintenance response time and equipment downtime.

Solution

Impact Washington-NIST MEP assessed the company's current status and improvement goals, and conducted an improvement project based on Lean Manufacturing improvement principles. The best employee generated ideas were prioritized and implemented in conjunction with Lean Manufacturing techniques.

Results

  • 10% reduction of equipment maintenance downtime
  • New procedures and visual controls for improving communications between operations and maintenance
  • New procedure for gathering equipment downtime data Improved maintenance shop layout
  • Point-of-use storage of tools and hardware

"Initially, we were a little skeptical about the Lean project. All this changed when we saw things taking shape and the maintenance shop turning into a well-organized workplace for a quicker and more efficient maintenance response. The Kaizen workshop helped us start looking at our workplace from a different perspective and created new and improved attitude among maintenance employees." - Rick Wettig, Maintenance Supervisor Hardel Mutual Plywood