Client Success Stories

JTD Enterprises, Inc. 

08-04-2021 10:12 AM

PROCESS ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT LEAD TO COST SAVINGS AND IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY

JTD Enterprises, Inc., (JTD) is a privately held manufacturing organization located in Lutz, Florida with 12 employees. JTD specializes in the manufacture and distribution of custom flag pole designs and tubular assemblies for the defense industry. JTD is a second-generation family owned business that is now being run by the founder’s son Tom Nihra, and his wife Deni Nihra. They have achieved explosive growth over the past 10 years, with the most recent annual revenue climbing to roughly $3M.

THE CHALLENGE

JTD Enterprises' solid growth trajectory resulted in an increased sense of urgency to get orders out on time and to do so in an efficient/cost effective manner. The current leadership, Tom and Deni Nihra, realized they needed some “expertise” to help realize these desires and relied on to FloridaMakes to help.

FLORIDAMAKES ROLE

After the initial FloridaMakes Enterprise Assessment was conducted with leadership it was discovered that the immediate key areas of improvement for JTD related to operational efficiency and process improvement. A need for standard operating procedures was also identified as a paramount need to any future process improvement.

The methodology to warrant solutions to their improvement needs involved identifying all manufacturing processes within one work center, conducting process improvement training with staff as determined by the leadership team, and documenting processes based upon the leadership team’s order of priority. During these steps, future process improvements were defined and documented in an overall project plan. These process improvement efforts included utilizing traditional Lean tools as well as Six Sigma type methods including Value Stream Mapping.

Future process improvement plans also incorporated a methodology for defining key metrics. Once key metrics were defined, key metrics utilization would include the use of metrics for day to day operations, and metric analysis. Most important to the metric rollout was the ability to currently identify future improvement opportunities.

RESULTS

  • Cost Savings: $75K to date and increasing due to increased efficiency
  • Culture: Transition from managed to self-managed workforce leadership
  • Improved Productivity: Production exceeded daily goals of 19 of the 22 working days in the past month
  • Other: Performance metrics monitored daily and outliers are addressed in real time

TESTIMONIAL

When we started this project with FloridaMakes we were hoping to get some help in documenting our current production process, but what we got was so much more! This became an in-depth study of our process which helped us identify inefficiencies in our production. Our consultant guided us through analyzing this information and helped us formulate a plan to make changes to increase the efficiency of our operation. With these changes, we have exceeded our production goals for more than 85% of the days last month.

The consultant challenged both management and staff to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone and consider the idea of a self-managed group. We have already started to undertake this process and have seen great improvements in both morale and productivity.

Our work with FloridaMakes has been an outstanding experience and I hope more manufacturers take advantage of this valuable resource that is available to us right in our own backyard!

—Tom Nihra, Vice President


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