PROJECT TYPE
Productivity Assessments
CHALLENGE
Maplecraft Doors in St. Catharines, manufactures custom and standard cupboard doors, as well as dovetail drawers and custom wooden range hoods. They did not want to go to an automated tracking system as they did not have success when they tried in the past. Instead, customer orders are tracked through a barcode system, although there isn’t a system in place to track raw wood materials.
SOLUTION
After assessing the facility and manufacturing processes, the research team was able to make four recommendations: 1. Implement a Business Plan deployment in each department to track safety, people, quality, productivity and cost; 2. Develop a 3D model of the facility to suggest improvements to process flow and improve overall processing time; 3. Consider improving areas for ripping and panel processing and relocate to the main building; 4. Expand the bar code tracking to include raw wood.
