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SUCCESS STORY

Deist Industries:

The New Gemba Way

Deist Industries NWIRC's Gemba Training

Deist Industries, Inc. (Deist) is a holding company for Bucks Fabricating, (a leading manufacturer of standard and specialty roll-off containers and small 2 yard to 10 yard trash dumpsters) and Switch-N-Go, (a manufacturer of interchangeable truck bodies and hoists for Class 3 to Class 7 trucks). Bucks Fabricating operates a 96,000+ square foot facility in Hadley, PA with 79 employees for fabricating and stocking their high-quality products and has just celebrated 40 years in business

In 2002, the Switch-N-Go® division was launched with a product designed for the Class 3-7 truck chassis market. This unique detachable truck body system was introduced to the medium duty work truck market and sold through a dealer network.  Since then, they have continued to grow their product line and improve their systems to better fit their customer needs. In 2019, the demand for Switch-N-Go® grew as did their facility. Switch-N-Go® moved to a 67,500 square foot facility in Saegertown, PA for manufacturing and stocking products.

 

 

 

  • The Challenge

    Deist leadership was evaluating needs for improvement within all of their plants and possible training that would lead to continuous improvement across operations for multiple product lines. Their goals were to support the company’s continued growth through increasing profits with improved efficiency and productivity, but they would need implementation assistance to ensure cost effectiveness, optimal production flow, process efficiencies, and worker productivity that is sustained for the future.

  • The Solution

    NWIRC’s Strategic Business Advisor met with leadership and identified gemba training as a strategic opportunity to improve organization and productivity. Gemba is a Japanese term that refers to ‘the real place’ or ‘where the work is done’. It emphasizes direct observation to identify opportunities for improvement, solve problems, and make informed decisions. At its core, it involves managers or leaders observing operations, engaging employees, and gaining insights into how work is performed. Most importantly, gemba fosters a culture of transparency, collaboration, and learning.

    Training was provided by NWIRC’s Operational Excellence Specialist, Shane Cantrell, in a collaborative way to transform the organization into a ‘gemba’ way of thinking. This included training a team of problem-solvers in the basics of gemba and providing coaching and support for the team during their journey. The onsite workplan included four sessions – spread over approximately 5 weeks – that reviewed fundamentals and included numerous Gemba walks at both facilities, Bucks Fabricating and Switch-N-Go.

    The plan included a train-the-trainer focus in order for the company to continue their practice of Gemba walks across the organization to engage employees, heighten quality and safety, and optimize processes.

     

     

     

Metal Background

Client Success

After only two-months post training and implementation, the managers, supervisors, and team leaders say the gemba walks are very helpful to more effectively collaborate with each other as a team and among both locations. “Having supervisors walk the floor together provides everyone a bigger overall picture and improves communication.” Operators expressed that the gemba boards, displaying goals and actuals for safety, quality, delivery and cost, are a useful communication tool to resolve issues and follow-up on open action items. The gemba training also initiated housekeeping 5S efforts to better organize tools and supplies at welding workstations on the shop floor. Employees have identified ways to consolidate processes for efficiency and change location of materials for greater safety and ergonomics.

One supervisor noted that he was skeptical of gemba based on his own reading and viewing videos on the topic, but Shane broke it down in a simplistic way and coached them through the gemba walks. “As a Supervisor, it has really helped me engage more with my team and to visualize where we are with our goals. Having action items go up on the board are giving employees more of an ownership and accountability towards the end result,” he said.

“As a result of the project, we believe gemba will help us retain current employment levels by making us more effective at our current manning levels and by implementing corrective actions to improve safety and quality. Most importantly, gemba will improve retention with better communication on issues, problems, and successes that impact employees in all our organizations,” said Joe Myor, Director of Finance and General Manager for Switch-N-Go. Deist’s leadership team estimates $45M in retained sales, 138 retained jobs, and a cost savings of $50,000 (among both facilities) in the first 12 to 18 months. They estimate that once further integrating across all departments, the savings realization should hit $40,000 to $50,000 annually because of the continuous improvement aspects.

Read the full Deist Industries story.

$45M

Retained in Sales

138

Jobs Retained

$50K

Cost Savings

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