HUI’s Journey

How LEAN and CULTURE DRIVE New Product Development

• HUI “Players”

  Julie Cosich

  • NBD – Sales/Marketing

  Mark Collins

  • NBD – Sales Engineering

• By the “Numbers”

  • Contract Manufacturer built for Agility
  • $21,000,000 in Revenue, 140 People, 77,000 square feet
  • Design, Metal Fabrication, Powder Coating, Assembly, Supply Chain Solutions
  • 75 years in existence

• Our Lean Journey

  • Lean on the floor in 1999
  • Lean in the office in 2002
  • Importance of group dynamics in 2002
  • Lean in Accounting and IT in 2005

Custom solutions for the customer’s brand

• Custom packaging prevents damage

Team built for Speed

• Concept designs < 5 days
• Engineering < 3 weeks
• Prototype < 4 weeks
• Production < 3 weeks
• Engineering changes? No problem!

Made to order

• Customers order what they need (build quantities 5-25)
• Decrease inventory costs
• Eliminate assembly by end user

Lean: Through Our Structure

NBD Team

• Get 6 New Medical Customers/Year to Prototype Stage
• Successfully transition work to CBD 2

Lean: Clear Expectations For Our Internal
And External Customers

• Discovery and Definition

  Deliverables From the Customer

  • Concept PO
  • Equipment information (dimensions and weights - typically in models, prints, or samples)
  • Cart specifications
  • Target production price

  From HUI to Customer (less than 5 days)

  • Three to five concept drawings
  • Project Timeline
  • Assembly drawing of all possible configurations of your options list.
  • Potential product cost ranges (+/- 20%)

  Concept Generation

  

• Design Engineering

  Customer Deliverable

  • Engineering PO

  NBD Deliverable to Customer (less than 3 weeks)

  • Photo realistic renderings
  • Drawing with overall dim
  • E-drawing (an executable electronic file that allows the end user to manipulate a 3-dimensional model of the concept)
  • Prototype cost
  • Estimated production cost (+/- 15%)

  NBD Deliverable to CBD

  • Customer meeting introduction to CL’s of CBD 2 Team
  • Complete Sales and Project Management Documents to CBD 2 CL’s

  Prototype

  HUI Deliverable to Customer

  • Production grade prototype
  • Estimated production cost (+/- 10%)
  • Estimated tooling costs for production
  • Delivery in 2-3 weeks

  NBD Deliverable to CBD 2 & Ops Team (at beginning of stage):

  • Prototype PO (from Customer)
  • Project Management Meeting (once received PO) to transfer all sales and project documents/information

  Production

Lean: Clear Measures Of Success

NBD Key Measures of Team Success:

Sales to Budget (Concept and Engineering Fees for 2008):

• Rolling trend of /month
• $90,000 sales YTD

Number of New Customers (Customers that obtain $35,000 in sales/production run)

• Rolling trend of 1 customer every 2 months

External Survey

• Survey completed upon end of the prototype phase
• Questions to help us improve our process & deliverables to the customer

Pipeline Activity

• Based on trends we update cycle times and cross reference with probabilities (actual data)
• Increase the # of customers needed at each section of the pipeline.
• The team flexes to the area that is the current bottleneck.

Lean: Through Group Dynamics

Why Does it Really Work?

• The way we conduct our meetings
• The way we hire
• The way we review each other’s performance

The Results

50% improvement in # of new customers for HUI

52% improvement in first year production dollars

15% improvement in TDLH (profitability measure)

Anticipated (2009) 35% cycle time improvement
(from lead generation – prototype PO)