Five Questions With: Bryan Orr

Winner of the 2020 Rhode Island Manufacturers Association annual award, it has been a significant year or so for Mahr Inc., maker of dimensional measurement equipment. Focused on growth, the company added nine key positions in 2020, including a new general manager of sales, manager of quality assurance and Northeast regional sales manager.

Bryan Orr, vice president of sales for the Americas and executive director, said during the COVID-19 shutdown, the company used that time to revamp its production floor. He spoke with Providence Business News about what Mahr has accomplished and where it’s headed.

PBN: Mahr reorganized production processes, helping it adapt to the changing needs of customers in a more efficient way. Can you detail the steps involved?

ORR: Mahr utilizes an employee training matrix that employs a simple point system. It’s based on skill level and capability. This allows us to rank each functional area in terms of available coverage and quickly identify any “at risk” areas. This same matrix also provides us with the skill set of each individual employee, making it possible to pair employees with functional areas.

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From there, supervisors plan training schedules by matching highly skilled workers with an employee that will be learning the new tasks or product. Our goal is to have multiple employees with high proficiency levels for each one of Mahr’s assembly areas. That way, we can rotate people in or out of a particular department based on current workloads.

Based on the nature of Mahr’s business, and the variety of products that we offer, we commonly see periods of high and low volume in just about all our assembly departments. Historically, Mahr would hire and train new employees on only one product line.

With our newly reorganized production processes, we are working to blend our staff together into more of a general-assembly role so that we can adapt much more quickly to spikes in demand. This allows Mahr to have better utilization of excess capacity when other areas are experiencing lower volumes.

PBN: Where did this revamping of production processes originate, and why now?

ORR: There were a few driving factors. Mahr Inc. has been operating in the same facility under one name or another for roughly 50 years. During that time, products have come and gone, causing some of our production areas to become more fragmented over time. It is fully understandable as to how it may have been much more logical to implement new processes into spaces that were open and available at the time. However, shutting down and moving other areas to make room for where that process would fit best in our overall floor plan would have been difficult to justify in terms of cost and lost productivity.

As we started to investigate how our floor plan was negatively impacting material flow and plant efficiencies, it was clear that it was time to reorganize. When the COVID-19 situation required the temporary closure of production lines, it was obvious at that point that we needed to expedite the process in order to be able to operate as lean and efficiently as possible when full-time staffing was possible.

The final driving factor behind our revamp of the assembly areas is the fact that we are combining two facilities into one. In order for us to physically fit everything under one roof and still leave room for future expansion and growth, we needed to utilize our workspaces much more effectively. There had been a considerable amount of wasted space in our previous floor plan. Our new layout eliminates much of this waste, allowing us to bring these areas closer together so that they can share the same resources and limit material flow throughout our facility.

PBN: What will Providence see in terms of change?

ORR: Mahr has two facilities across from one another on Eddy Street. One location houses all of the production and production-support areas, and the other is our administration building for senior management, IT [information technology], finance, customer service, etc.

Construction has now started in our production building on the third floor – previously used mostly for storage of bulk items, along with one of our smaller assembly areas. Our goal is to have new office areas complete and ready for everyone previously located in the administration building to move in by mid-summer of 2021.

There are a couple of reasons for this move. First, we wanted to bring all staff together under one roof. We find that the physical separation of two groups limits the amount of interaction; we hope to increase the dynamics between all our functional areas.

As with our production areas, we felt that it was time for some modernization of our offices spaces as well. The intent is to provide a new, clean and modern work environment for our office staff and to give Mahr more of an advantage when it comes to attracting new talent.

We are not planning for any increases or decreases in workforce as a result of combining facilities. But our plans do include room for future growth.

PBN: What other areas has Mahr invested in recently?

ORR: One of the products that we manufacture at Mahr uses air pressure to make dimensional measurements accurately and quickly. Many companies will use air gaging to measure cylinder bores, pistons, bearing journals, turbines and medical implants since they are extremely reliable, and it is easy to train people how to use them properly.

The main challenge with this product is that air gages are usually application specific and manufactured to order. In a world where we are increasingly getting used to buying a product on a site like Amazon and having it arrive the next day, we anticipate that lead times on items that are manufactured per order are going to increasingly become less acceptable in the market.

We decided that we needed to be proactive and get ahead of that curve, so we invested in additional machine tools and developed a process allowing us to parametrically program CNC [computer numerical control] equipment. This gives Mahr the opportunity to completely machine an air gage within 24 hours of receiving a customer PO [purchase order].

From there, it is sent out for some outside processes prior to final grinding and calibration, but ultimately, we can turn around a custom built-to-order product and deliver it to a customer within days of them sending us a PO. Previously, lead times on this product would range anywhere between four to six weeks.

PBN: In these days of COVID-19, what has been the biggest challenge for the company?

ORR: There have been three primary business challenges as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic: interruptions in internal operations, supply-chain disruptions and the shift to remote working. Planning for different scenarios was key, and our management worked diligently to create ready-to-execute strategies for future possibilities. These plans enabled Mahr to act quickly.

We worked closely with our vendors to ensure there was limited disruption to our supply chain. For example, with reduced airline routes, deliveries from overseas required us to make changes in our ordering schedules and to increase our emergency stock levels.

We also had to act quickly to get our staff the tools they needed to be able to perform their jobs and activities remotely. However, the increased flexibility to work remotely is now expected to have a significant long-term business impact.

Throughout the crisis, stabilizing the business was and still is the top priority, and keeping our essential business customers supported remains critical. However, Mahr has now come out on top, likely because we recognized and seized opportunities as they arose.

Susan Shalhoub is a PBN contributing writer.