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Manufacturability Case Study of New Speed Box Product (Endurance-40)
With the help of: Mississippi Manufacturers Association Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MMA-MEP)
About
Speed Box, LLC is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business located in Ridgeland, Mississippi. It is the manufacturer of Speedbox, a modular container system for palletized cargo, and distributor of the Guardian by Speedbox line of hard cases. Speed Boxes are heavy-duty, interlocking, stackable containers that are also lightweight, lockable, shatter- and water-resistant, and fit perfectly on a 463-L pallet. Speed Box does all its manufacturing in Mississippi with its main manufacturing facility in West Point, MS. The company was founded in 2014 with its first sales in July of 2016. Since then, the company has doubled in revenue each year.
The Challenge
Speed Box, LLC produces the Voyer-70 mobilization system which consists of Voyager-70 utility containers that can be stacked and interlocked on a 463-L pallet that is used for transporting military air cargo. This initial product was used by Army Special Forces, Navy EOD, and Air Force Pararescue Jumpers. The potential for new markets brought about the need for a new product for pickup and SUV loading and optimized to fit multiple military type pallets. This led to the design of the next product intended to be a smaller version of the first with improvements based on feedback on the Voyager-70. Summers saw a need in his company for the technical resources to effectively design a product that met his specifications and those of his customers.
This is an excellent benefit to any company that is lucky enough to take part in it! The staff at the MMA-MEP Center at MSU-CAVS-E were subject matter experts who helped a new company without a lot of in-house technical expertise make smart decisions during the design phase, thus saving money in tooling and additional money in labor and materials in the production phase. We are lucky to have had the opportunity to partner with them and hope to do it again.
MEP's Role
At that same time, a team of researchers at MMA-MEP Center at MSU-CAVS-E, a NIST MEP affiliate, was seeking a military-based product to use as a case study of their Manufacturability Assessment Knowledge-based Evaluation (MAKE Tool). Summers pulled together Speed Box's design team, the plant manager, and the tool and die makers and paired them with MSU-CAVS-E to perform a real-time manufacturability assessment as the product was being designed.
By doing this, he was able to direct design decisions but also get feedback on any manufacturability concerns during the design development phase thus saving cost, improving quality and reducing time to market.