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Go Fast Manufacturing Uses a Profit Risk Assessment and Reveals a Vital Role for Growth
With the help of: Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing and Productivity (WCMP)
About
Go Fast Manufacturing was founded in 1993 in New London, Wisconsin. The family-owned company manufactures an internationally respected pallet and sawmill machinery line. Go Fast has a reputation for quality, durability, and innovation that enhances customer productivity. Its 30+ employees are focused on striving toward the company’s vision grow to a $70M company with a diverse product offering from base products to fully automated lines for customers in the sawmill, pallet, and custom high volume cutting markets.
The Challenge
Go Fast has experienced exceptional growth in recent years and expects that pattern to continue. To accommodate its ambitious plans, the company added production space, hired new employees, and increased its reliance on in-house manufacturing. The company knew developing a growth road map and automating would be essential to achieving its goals. Its bank suggested reaching out to WMEP Manufacturing Solutions, part of the Wisconsin MEP and the MEP National Network™, for help.
Running a small business is a challenge every day. We appreciate WMEP's second set of eyes and insights into our strengths and weaknesses. Our staff can see how fast we're growing. They understand we need help to achieve our goals and appreciate the gains in accuracy and speed we get from automation. Everybody in our facility was engaged and excited about the automation. They could see it would help make our product better and easier to produce.
MEP's Role
To help Go Fast meet its growth goals and to gain insights into the company’s operations, metrics, and goals, WMEP recommended Go Fast participate in its comprehensive PRA© - Profit Risk Assessment. Go Fast was assessed from the perspectives of leadership, strategy, people, productive assets, special factors, and overall results. Several recommendations followed. These included developing the company’s vision and strategy, implementing a Scoreboard Execution system with leading and lagging indicators, focusing on sales growth, and developing an automation roadmap.
WMEP’s AutomationAdvisor™ assessment - which evaluates a company’s physical processes to determine which are likely to offer the best return on investment if automated - produced an automation roadmap. This roadmap identified the best automation investment for the company as the replacement of an outdated plasma table with a laser cutter.