Company Profile
American Structures and Designs is a family-owned manufacturing company that makes aluminum balconies, deck railings, sunshades, and patio covers. A significant percentage of its aluminum is recycled — something the company is proud of. AS&D sells its products to dealers, distributors, and wholesalers in both residential and commercial construction industries. The company recently moved from Pacific to a warehouse in Sumner that is three times larger than the previous one, with improvements to be made now and future growth in mind. It also has a location in Portland. Chances are you’ve seen AS&D’s products on major apartment buildings, hotels, and more.
Solution
The largest challenge was making sure the move to the much larger facility went smoothly. This also was an opportunity to take what the company was doing and make improvements. A clean slate, if you will.
First, the team needed to evaluate the design and flow of the current space, and study how effectively it worked for day-to-day function. Then the staff was trained on how to gather information — everything from when and where people moved to cycle times. Improvement ideas were sought.
An AS&D team was formed and taught how to build relationship charts, retrieve equipment specifications, and how to optimize machine placement to streamline operations in the new facility.
Several new floorplans were designed, and with an instructor, pros/cons conversations were detailed. A floorplan was chosen by the team, and then further refined. An operational drawing was created that showed where the equipment would go, where aisles would be, as well as storage, docks doors, entrances, emergency exits, office spaces, employee amenities, future growth plans, and more.
The plans were shared with others working on that space, including electricians, riggers, and other tradespeople so everyone was on the same page.
Even after the company moved into the new facility, improvements and tweaks continued to be made. It taught the team how to be adaptive and feel empowered to make changes as necessary — good in any business.
AS&D worked with Kocer Consulting, an Impact Washington Resource Partner that provided Lean training, flow, relationship charts, project management, vendor coordination, Kaizen, and continuous improvement support. A marketing/instruction document-creation expert, Carol Danhof, also was hired by AS&D to complete installation instruction and marketing documentation creation instruction.