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Rumford Stone Utilizes a Lean Training and Implementation Program to Improve Their Business
With the help of: New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NHMEP)
About
It was 1995 when Rumford Stone started their business out of a 2-car garage in Allenstown, New Hampshire. At the time it was a father and 2 son operation, but it has grown much larger over the years. Today, Rumford Stone has 60 employees. Their main operation is housed in a 21,000-square-foot facility in Bow, New Hampshire, with a 1,500-square-foot showroom in Pembroke, New Hampshire. Rumford Stone specializes in quartz and natural stone countertop fabrication and installation for kitchens, bathrooms and fireplaces. Everything they do is customized to meet the needs of their clients.
The Challenge
“We’re a custom job shop. We don’t have the luxury of making 1,000 widgets at a time,” said Vince Trento, President of Rumford Stone. “So, we were having a problem with our sink handling process. We had solid processes in place for making countertops, but the handling and coordination of customer sinks were creating inefficiencies. We supplied some sinks from inventory, customer’s supplied others, some were left onsite, some were brought back to the shop and others were delivered to our shop via UPS/FedEx. The coordination of the sinks with fabrication and installation had become very complex and had a very high error rate; especially considering it was a low margin component.”
A few years ago, Vince had attended the Principles of Lean public workshop put on by NH MEP, part of the MEP National Network™. He learned a lot about overcoming inefficiencies in the workshop and thought it would be beneficial to the company to bring in a lean training program.
The tangible benefits of NH MEP's lean training are evident in our financial and operational metrics. These improvements have not only strengthened our market position but have also fostered a culture of continuous improvement and efficiency among our employees. We are grateful for the invaluable support from NH MEP, which has had a meaningful and very positive impact on our business operations.
MEP's Role
Vince reached out to NH MEP, who assigned a Project Manager to develop an on-site lean training and implementation program to meet their needs. The introduction to the principles of lean was the foundation and building blocks of the training at Rumford Stone. The beginning of the training was focused on 20 key members of their team with more training for the rest of the employees. Shortly thereafter, a value stream mapping training event targeted a specific product family. That led to a Kaizen training event that focused on targeting and eliminating waste discovered during the value stream mapping process.
The goal of these training sessions was to designate key company employees as mentors in the lean deployment methods, while engaging other employees on lean manufacturing techniques and methodologies. This helped to increase workforce skills, and fostered an environment based on the lean principles.