Sustainable Lean Culture Established at MicroMetl (Lean at MicroMetl, the Prequel)

MicroMetl employs 92 persons at their ISO 9001:2008 certified Sparks, NV manufacturing facility, producing curbs and specialty sheet metal products/systems for the Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Industry (HVAC).  Since its founding in 1965 as General Sheet Metal, Innovative energy-efficient products and superior customer service led to MicroMetl being named as one of the Inc. 500 fastest growing small businesses in the U.S. for the years of 1983 and 1984.

MicroMetl operates in a highly competitive, price sensitive market. Current economic conditions intensified the challenges to remain profitable and financially viable. MicroMetl employees have periodically attended Nevada Industry Excellence (NVIE) Lean Certification, Lean 101 and ISO Auditor Workshops and determined that incorporating these state-of-the art practices would be critical to their continued success.   After consulting with NVIE, Plant Manager Casey Nichols and Quality Assurance Manager, Bill Martin recognized that a successful lean implementation would require engaging and empowering all workers (irrespective of culture) to be responsible and involved in the continuous improvement process. 

Based on previous successful lean adoptions at manufacturers with large numbers of Hispanic and Latino workers with limited English proficiency, NVIE proposed a two phased implementation process tailored for MicroMetl.  The just completed Phase 1 included all employees participating in more than 2,000 man-hours of training in Lean English Essentials (preparatory training in lean principles for employees with limited English proficiency), Anglo Culture, Hispanic Culture and Spanish for Supervisors training sessions, culminating in a series of Lean 101 Workshops.  Phase 2 of the implementation will include training a nine-member team from MicroMetl to apply lean techniques through targeted implementations of  Value Stream Mapping, 5-S, application of Takt time, balanced flow, Quality Mapping, Set-up reduction, documentation and deployment of standard work, cellularization and facilities planning. 

NVIE also worked with MicroMetl to secure a training grant for the project funded by the Workforce Investment Act and administered by Nevadaworks, a state workforce development agency.

Although having just completed Phase 1 of the lean implementation program, MicroMetl has already begun to realize significant returns from their investment in employee training including:

-$85,000 in increased sales
-$225,000 in retained sales
-$10,000 in cost savings
-Indirect labor decreased by 21%
-25 positions retained
-Production efficiency improved by 7%

More importantly, MicroMetl’s employees are critically examining their work methods and measuring them against lean standards.  “Lean Thinking” has become ingrained in the company culture.  A common “Lean Culture” has been established and building on their initial successes, MicroMetl is looking forward to realizing continued improvements.

The project has also helped Nevadaworks to fulfill its mission of preparing northern Nevada’s workforce to meet the needs of current and potential northern Nevada employers.  Nevadaworks was able to observe first-hand, the benefits of lean to MicroMetl and its employees and is anxious to fund similar initiatives in the future.

Testimonial:

"The implementation of Lean manufacturing at MicroMetl West has been quite exciting. One of the biggest Challenges we faced in our plant has been the language barrier with our Hispanic work force. A big part of the lean implementation was the education and training of the Lean and 5S principles for both of our Spanish and English speaking workforce.

Nevada Industry Excellence took the time to educate both sides of our work force to understand the cultural difference, Lean and 5S principles.  In That Lean is the elimination of waste and not the elimination of jobs has tremendously helped advanced the implementation of our Lean Manufacturing project at MicroMetl West. Through this education we have received feedback from our workforce that they would like to continue with their education of the opposite language. Our Team has also stated how they are able to implement the Lean principles into their day to day lives.

We have seen big improvements in just a short time in our plant. Communication between Management, Engineering and Production has greatly improved and continues to get stronger. By learning the Lean process we have found huge opportunities for improvements. Taking a step back and looking at our process we have already eliminated wasted movement and the elimination of waste in our day to day processes. These improvements have enabled us to realize a 3% decrease in operational expense. This saving goes directly to the bottom line.  We found there were differences between the way our 1st shift and 2nd shift would assemble the same product and this was very noticeable. So we took the time and evaluated each shifts process and took the best of both shifts and set up standard work based on the best practices. Now both shifts are building this product more efficiently. Today it is hard to tell which shift built which product.

We realize our journey to being a world class company has just begun and with the continuing support and encouragement from the people at Nevada Industrial Excellence we are confident that MicroMetl West will continue to be successful in developing the tools needed to excel in today’s market place.

Working with Nevada Industry Excellence made this process enjoyable and quite painless. NVIE has always been there for MicroMetl West. This includes our journey to ISO9001-2008 certification, with classes in Internal Auditing, ISO implementation, and the introduction to several area experts. Nevada Industry Excellence is a great business partner and we look forward to our next project with them."     
Casey Nichols, Plant Manager, MicroMetl West
Bill Martin, Quality Assurance Manager, MicroMetl West