Company remakes self with efficiency overhaul

MADE-OVER MAKER: Groov-Pin President and CEO Scot Jones, left, encountered resistance when he started the process of introducing lean manufacturing approaches in the company, but now he can feel the enthusiasm from employees for the new approach, including Darrel Sweet. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
MADE-OVER MAKER: Groov-Pin President and CEO Scot Jones, left, encountered resistance when he started the process of introducing lean manufacturing approaches in the company, but now he can feel the enthusiasm from employees for the new approach, including Darrel Sweet. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Groov-Pin Corp., a Smithfield-based precision manufacturer of industrial pins and threaded inserts, has put collaboration at the heart of its business model during the past few years, and the result has been almost a completely new company.
The new company is responsive, humming with creative energy, a hub for teamwork at every level. But getting there wasn’t easy.
There were people on staff, solid employees, who were unconvinced when, four years ago, Scot Jones, Groov-Pin’s president and CEO, first started talking about following in the footsteps of Toyota, an internationally recognized pioneer in lean manufacturing.
It soon became clear to all, though, that Jones was serious about adopting Japanese principles that required tossing out unnecessary items from the factory, storing necessary items efficiently for easy access, and maintaining the new order. He also began talking about kaizen, a set of business principles designed to improve communication and to reduce wasted effort.
Jones began conferring with experts in lean manufacturing, including consultants from Toyota itself. The beginning of the transition was bumpy. “There was certainly a mixed reaction,” Jones said recently. “We had people within the operation who were excited and others who were really resistant to change.”
The old ways at Groov-Pin had created lag times between orders for new products and delivery that were increasingly untenable. Getting to the point at which products could be manufactured and shipped in 20 days, as they now are at Groov-Pin, in contrast to 12 weeks a decade ago, required a completely new business model.
For the doubting Thomases on staff, a field trip to another Rhode Island manufacturer, one that had already embodied some of the Japanese principles that Jones was interested in for Groov-Pin, proved to be a turning point.
The manufacturer that the Groov-Pin employees visited was Richmond-based Vibco, where President and CEO Karl Wadensten, a professional acquaintance of Jones, showed them a factory that was clearly operating at a very high level and staffed by individuals with an enthusiasm that was impossible to miss.
“We learned a lot from the people who were working in the factory, and we were impressed by the energy and the progress that people there were making,” Jones said. “We wanted to duplicate that energy within our business.” Groov-Pin’s transition to its new processes involved doing both cleanup, which springs from Japanese practices known as the 5 Ss, as well as kaizens.
“Once we began to clean up an area, then we began to do kaizens,” Jones said. “Kaizen is a formalized process for looking at current state, imagining what you want for a future state, and then defining possibilities and action steps to get from one place to the next.”
The most important part, Jones emphasized, is the third – where people in a work area begin to meet together on their own. That leads to an idea development process, with employees coaching one another on ideas and their implementation. “We went from a starting point to a self-reinforcing process where people were implementing their own ideas and making their own areas better,” Jones said.
What was the hardest part for a conventional, American CEO? In Jones’ case, at least, it was letting go. But the difficulty in letting go didn’t end with him; it went through the management ranks.
“The supervisors had to realize that there was no way that they could go as fast as everyone implementing their own ideas,” Jones said.
The process of kaizen, as implemented at Groov-Pin, involves returning to each area of the plant as many as five times, to allow more and more sophisticated solutions to emerge.
“You don’t try to get all of the improvement at once,” Jones said. “You make improvements iteratively, and return to the process again and again.”
The creativity, when given the chance to germinate, had a way of multiplying. “Some of the changes that we found as we went into later passes we never could have imagined at the outset,” Jones said. “And these ideas all came from the people in the area. The answers were already with the people.”
Jones knew that things were in the midst of changing in some big ways when other businesses started visiting Groov-Pin about 15 months into its embrace of lean manufacturing. “We noticed that our people giving the tour had the same energy that the Vibco people had, and that was for us an ‘aha’ moment.”
Revenue figures also are encouraging. Company revenue increased from $9 million in 2010 to $12 million in 2012.
The pulse of creativity at Groov-Pin is leading in some truly unforeseen directions. For example, Jones has developed an interest in 3-D printing, and is exploring ways in which the technology may create new product lines for Groov-Pin.
Until now, the company has done what’s known as subtractive manufacturing, in which products are made by cutting metal. The 3-D-printing experimentation appears to be leading to what’s known as additive manufacturing.
“I’m visiting the Department of Energy demonstration area for metal additive manufacturing,” Jones said. “I don’t think the additive would ever replace our core business, but it could be a new area of business.”
Groov-Pin is intent on helping create a Rhode Island workforce that is prepared to do the kinds of advanced manufacturing taking place at its Smithfield factory.
Toward that end, Jones has begun a collaboration with makeRI, a group of manufacturers created to shrink the skills gap in the state, and to build a training program.
“We’re happy to have and hope to continue to have a stream of interns with us,” Jones said. “Currently, we have two interns from [the Community College of Rhode Island], in the first cohort of a revival of manufacturing program there, and we’re really excited to help young people understand what a great place advanced manufacturing is to work.” •

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