Modern celebrates a night of productivity
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/29/2006
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Click the icon to see pictures from the Productivity Award dinner |
In recent years, the U.S. economy has been like the little engine that could: No matter what the world throws its way, the economy keeps chugging along.
Productivity is the reason why that's possible. And improved productivity is at the heart of the materials handling industry. That's why
Modern Materials Handling magazine (Booth 2400) hosted its 16th annual
Productivity Achievement Awards banquet on Monday night at the Renaissance Hotel.
"Manufacturing productivity rose 5% for 2005," said Gary Forger,
Modern's editorial director. "Within the sector, nondurable goods manufacturing was up 3.4% while durable goods manufacturing posted a productivity increase of 6.6%."
"Tonight," he added, "we have three companies that have developed their own special formulas for improving productivity."
The annual dinner honors three companies chosen by the magazine's
editorial advisory board for their great strides in productivity. This year's winners —
Thomas Built Buses,
Ann Taylor and
Kirkland's—represent excellence in manufacturing, distribution and warehousing.
The companies were judged against five criteria: customer service as practiced both internally and externally; the capability to respond quickly to changing market conditions; the flexibility to alter operations to respond to unplanned events; the ability to deliver consistently the right item to the right place at the right time; and a clearly demonstrated ability to improve overall operations.
To produce its new line of school buses,
Thomas Built not only created a new 275,000 square foot plant in High Point, N.C., it redesigned and automated its old manual manufacturing processes. The new plant will quickly ramp up from producing eight buses a day to 22 buses a day.
"We set off a few years back to renovate the bus building industry," said Anthony Goff, manufacturing engineer. "And I'm proud to stand here today and accept this award."
Through a redesign of its materials handling processes, an
Ann Taylor DC designed to supply 450 stores is now supplying 830 stores with capacity to supply 1050. "With a lot of help from employees and partners, we took a very manual operation to the next level of automation," said Nancy Perone, director of distribution for the Louisville, Ky., DC. "We've seen our handling cost per unit go from 29 cents to less than 8 cents."
Finally
Kirkland's, a home accent retailer, consolidated three DCs shipping a peak of 30,000 cases a day into one single 700,000 square foot warehouse in Jackson, Tenn., shipping as many as 45,000 cases a day. "This was only possible through the concentrated effort of all of our people to reduce our costs, increase our service levels and get a competitive advantage in the market," said Todd Weier, vice president of logistics.
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