Continuous Improvement at Acme is Not Just Words
but Action!

October 6, 2009

Acme Industries, Inc. has been dedicated to servicing our customers with high precision machined products. In 2007 Acme realized that we were growing so rapidly our infrastructure and processes in place were being strained. We made some very important decisions;
Facilities:

• Consolidation- three buildings for manufacturing have been consolidated into a single building. This has decreased complexity, improved support to production such as maintenance, and reduced internal lead times to manufacture.
• Expansion- the new building gives us the ability to substantially increase production for the future within the same building.
• Support personnel for production were also consolidated into a single building with production. This dramatically improved communications.

Programs:

• The supply chain has introduced several key programs
• A Balanced Scorecard Program has been introduced with key suppliers. The goals are to improve on time deliveries, quality, and flexibility.
• Strategic sourcing program is being implemented to identify suppliers for the future. Understanding our suppliers better is important to being able to support our customer base in a timely manner.
• Metrics have been introduced that did not exist before. A strict customer on time delivery metric has been established with aggressive goals for the company. Metrics for supplier on time delivery has also been developed to support the balanced scorecard program.
• Quality continues to measure PPM for our internal quality and we publish the PPM of our suppliers as well. This has been integrated into our supplier balanced scorecard program.
• Lean has been a program for several years at Acme. This year we hired an experienced lean program manager. As a result our events have dramatically increased and the results from them are very visible.

Personnel:
Acme has continued to review our personnel and is bringing in experienced professionals to support improvements that result in better customer service and cost containment. We have also organized our departments to be customer focused. This can be seen in just a few actions;

• Acme added the Lean Manager cited above.
• Acme has added an experienced Director of Supply Chain.
• Our most experienced engineering manager is now responsible for the RFP process. We want to respond as timely as possible to our customers with our quotes and as professional as possible.

Systems:
Acme has been improving their systems utilization including an ERP system that will also be utilizing the advanced scheduling concepts from the Theory of Constraints.

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