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HT Marketing: A Distributor of Hawaiian Tropic Sun Care Products
Bob Jackson
President
As the largest distributor of Hawaiian Tropic sun care products, we
have demonstrated extraordinary prowess in consumer packaged-goods marketing
and distribution, and we saw tremendous opportunities for growth. However,
our lack of warehouse capacity, bottlenecks in handling shipments and returns,
and high inventory levels blocked our aspirations. We brought Capra in
to streamline operations and establish an infrastructure capable of accommodating
significantly higher levels of growth without requiring additional capital
investment or expanded staffing. By making better use of existing space,
our effective warehouse capacity doubled. Key reasons for our success included:
1) reducing the number of work steps in the entire warehouse operation
from 187 to 60; 2) redesigning the physical layout using kanban techniques
to process returns at the time of receipt; and, 3) reducing processing
time in the shipping process.
With Capra’s help, we process returns 96% faster and ship products 50%
faster. At the same time, the need for additional information systems capacity
was eliminated by decentralizing tasks to end users and limiting automation
efforts to those relating directly to operating needs.
The bottom-line is that both capital and capacity were freed up, future
manpower requirements were reduced and new efficiency was achieved in the
movement of our goods to their destination.
The Miller Company: A Manufacturer of Copper-Based Strip Alloys
Tony Tremaine and Dave Wingfield
CEO and COO
Our company draws upon a 150-year history of successfully meeting customer
needs for specialty fabricated products. We have thrived by effectively
coping with change, and that was precisely the challenge when we called
in The Capra Group. Changes in our order mix and a highly demanding competitive
environment in which supply exceeded demand required a multi-faceted effort
to improve performance.
Within the first six months after assembling improvement teams to focus
on performance improvement and "managing what matters," our measurable
results were striking. On-time delivery - the key measure of our customers’
satisfaction - nearly doubled to 95 percent, while inventory was reduced
by 25 percent and plant throughput increased 17 percent with no additional
capital investment.
With Capra’s help we redesigned the order entry and fulfillment process,
attacked bottleneck operations to increase plant capability, synchronized
inflows of material with demand, and focused employee education and involvement
on sustaining performance improvement.
Indicative of the success of the effort, one of our key customers, who
had expressed concerns about performance, increased its annual orders by
$2 million.
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