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QRM reduces lead times, eases internal stress and tension
"RenewAire operates in a high-mix, variable-demand environment. We
struggled for years to try to forecast specific unit revenue, but no matter how
hard we tried and what method we used, we were always wrong. The result was
long customer lead times and an incredible amount of stress and tension
between Sales and Production.
Implementing Quick Response Manufacturing eased the tension (We no
longer asked for or cared about useless forecasts!) and allowed us to focus on
getting product out the door to customers when and where they wanted it. We
have reduced lead times for residential units from 10 days to 1 day and for
commercial units from 25 days to 10 days.
In 3.5 years of QRM, revenue has grown 97% while total labor cost has been reduced by 15% of revenue. We're amazed that direct production hours increased only 37% to achieve our near doubling in volume. The process has been truly liberating, and we feel we have barely begun."
Chuck Gates, President
RenewAire LLC
Madison, Wis.
For full benefit of QRM, don't forget office operations
“We had always had measurements for our manufacturing processes, but we had not applied that thinking to our office operations. We were beginning to experience good results with QRM on our shop floor when Rajan Suri made us aware of how important it was to apply QRM to our office operations as well.
We now have four Q-ROCs (Quick Response Office Cells) that combine 
customer service, estimating and production control. They include some
purchasing and a process technician who provides work instructions to the
line. QRM gives us a definite edge on our competition. A new customer
recently told me that QRM was a factor in why our company was selected as a
supplier.”
Tom Schabel, President
Alexandria Extrusion Company
Alexandria, Minnesota
On-time parts delivery up, cycle times cut in half
with QRM 
“We learned about Quick Response Manufacturing in 1999, when we toured a QRM member company’s operation. We were so impressed that we wanted to mimic what they had achieved.
We started by joining the QRM Center, then we took some ideas from Prof. Suri’s book and attended a QRM training seminar. To spearhead our effort, we established a group we call AMP:Advanced Manufacturing Project.
This team helped us adopt QRM principles and combine them with
our other cost-reduction and productivity- improvement measures.
We have increased average on-time delivery of parts to our assembly lines from 40% to 85% and cut our fabrication cycle times from 25 days to 12. We continue to benefit from sharing ideas with other QRM member companies and sending employees to QRM training. Hearing it from the experts and seeing the data help cement the concepts as well as corroborate and reinforce what they hear in the plant.”
Bob Dempsey
Assistant Manager, Product Divisions
S&C Electric Company
Chicago, Ill.
QRM helps reduce cycle times, increase customer satisfaction and competitiveness
"Our customers were asking for reduced lead times
as well as order-fulfillment flexibility. Pricing pressures from offshore manufacturers dictated that our competitive advantage would have to become responsiveness. We realized that we had to make a transition from a very traditional batch-and-queue operation -- complete with its long lead times -- to the Quick Response Manufacturing's cellular approach.
Carlisle-Red Wing joined the QRM Center in 2002. Plant management attended the two-day QRM implementation training, and then in late 2002 we participated in a student-led QRM project to launch our first manufacturing cell. It became operational in late 2003, and we will have our second cell up and running this summer.
We are beginning to understand the strategic importance of cycle time as a critical metric for customer satisfaction. Collaborating with the QRM Center is providing a focused, long-term approach to improving competitiveness for our facility."
Guy Renshaw, Plant Manager
Carlisle Power Transmission, Red Wing, Minnesota
Carlisle-Red Wing was named Supplier of the Year for fiscal 2003
by John Deere's Commercial & Consumer Equipment Division.
Its accomplishments include a count of only six rejected belts
out of the 257,022 it delivered to Deere that year.