NASCO Industries Builds Competitive Advantage Through Unit Production
Protective Outerwear Maker Enhances Customer Service with Eton UPS
In today's globally competitive apparel industry, staying relevant to customers has become increasingly challenging for US-based manufacturers. While many have embraced offshore product sourcing as a means of delivering lower cost goods, one small Indiana firm is aggressively growing its business through a distinctly different strategy based on maximizing customer service.
After purchasing the former Uniroyal raingear manufacturing facility in 1979, NASCO Industries, Inc. (www.nascoinc.com) has expanded its product offer to include a wide range of liquid-proof protective wear for electric utility, petroleum, chemical, and other industrial applications. The company's single facility in Washington, IN employs 100 machine operators that generate a 2000 suit single-shift capacity.
As part of continuous improvement initiatives, NASCO replaced its progressive bundle system with modular manufacturing practices nearly 10 years ago. Then, in 2001, they decided that Eton Systems' unit production systems would enable them to make a competitive leap in their marketplace. Over the past 4 years, the company has continued its investment in Eton's solutions. Today, NASCO utilizes three complete Eton lines comprising 99 workstations. They have also added 65 computerized Eton offline bundle tracking stations for component prep and infrequent operations in order to achieve fully integrated shop floor control.
"Even though modular provided us with some savings, we found Eton to be the best way to achieve the efficiency and capacity we needed to become a world-class manufacturing operation", stated Todd Smith, President & CEO of NASCO. "Because ours are not cookie-cutter products, we believe that keeping manufacturing here in the USA allows us to better serve our customers."
Highlighting its focus on customer service, approximately 60% of NASCO's production is made to order, as specified by their distributor network. Given this level of customization, it is common to find more than 75 different designs in process at any given time. "Even though we are a manufacturer, we see ourselves rather as a service business", added Smith. "Instead of limiting options to only reduce costs, our strategy is to build competitive advantage in this niche by embracing customization. We don't have a minimum size order. You will find everything from lots of one to 20,000 piece orders in our plant. Eton allows us to process small orders just as efficiently as bigger ones."
Smith acknowledges that many small companies are reluctant to make large investments in enabling technologies like Eton Systems. "First, our investment decisions were supported by our market leadership and our confidence in our ability to sell our products. After that, ROI was everything to us. When we discovered that more than 20% of our operators' time was spent in non-productive activities like moving products around, we realized that we could be much more competitive by turning that into needle time. Since we implemented the system we have experienced reduction in direct labor cost and received a payback several months earlier than expected. After using Eton over several years, we are very pleased with the efficiency and throughput gains that we have achieved. It works as advertised."
In addition to recognizing the traditional payback on the investment, Smith also cites other advantages that NASCO has experienced with Eton. "A major reduction in worker fatigue is something that has been a largely unexpected benefit for us. Our older, highly skilled workers that were at first reluctant now say they would never go back to the old way. We also have expanded our opportunities as we can now compete for new types of business including larger order sizes than we could not previously produce in short cycles. NASCO is in the problem solving business. We continue to find new ways to leverage Eton to better serve our customers while building for our future."
SOURCE: Eton Systems