FastLane Helps Forre Sports Leverage Lean For Growth

Forre Sports, located in Piqua, Ohio, is a multi-generational family-owned business. Forre Sports manufactures and packages sports accessories, including nationally recognized grip control products used in bowling, baseball, softball, racquet sports, and darts. Forre Sports also provides high-quality, affordable private label, manufacturing, and packaging solutions for your powder, liquid, and aerosol products as well as services such as blister sealing and industrial sewing.

Forre Sports was facing a few challenges. Their lead times were growing, and they worried that it would jeopardize their client relationships and their sales. They needed to reduce their lead times by increasing throughput and productivity. They also needed to clarify their processes and improve consistency so they could better predict 
costs and scheduling.

FastLane, part of the Ohio MEP and the MEP National Network™, provided supplemental engineering support to plan a new equipment installation. Then, FastLane facilitated a Lean 5S event to optimize productivity and decrease waste in the Forre Sports processes. One of Forre Sports main products used to take 3 days to fill and pack and now takes only minutes. This project doubled throughput and allowed Forre Sports to improve operations and create a more consistent process. As a result, scheduling is now more accurate and their ability to predict labor costs has greatly improved. The product cost per unit has dropped 35% and lead time that had been eight months, has improved to one month. The best impacts are seen in Forre Sports employees, who now say they feel empowered. They provide feedback and have introduced new ideas to further improve the manufacturing and packaging processes.