WMEP’s transformational productivity assessment key to manufacturer’s success
Carbide Grinding-Gorilla Mill was a respected, third-generation company with solid sales, a great product line and a big dream: To go head-to-head with national companies. Fortunately, they knew just where to turn for help: WMEP Manufacturing Solutions, a public-private consulting group focused on helping Wisconsin manufacturers succeed.
An innovative approach to business transformation
Carbide’s journey began with an enterprise-wide assessment, followed by an integrated, three-element process:
Put the right people in the right seats
“The best operational changes won’t have staying power unless you engage the hearts and minds of your team,” said Carol Crawford, a senior consultant at WMEP.
To make this happen, every Carbide employee completed a Gallup StrengthsFinders assessment.
“I thought I needed to be involved in everything,” said Kevin Cranker, Carbide’s president and owner. “The minute I started letting go, and other people started to realize from their StrengthFinders assessment what they were good at and enjoyed doing, we put them in those areas. Once we did, things started to turn around.”
Pinpoint opportunities for operational improvements
WMEP analyzed Carbide’s value stream from order entry through product shipment and identified how to streamline and improve each process. As a result, Carbide saw a significant decrease in reworks and scrap and a 33% increase in throughput, capacity and on-time deliveries.
Understand what good looks like
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, were the third element of Carbide’s transformation.
WMEP worked with the leadership team to identify key processes, created an interdependent process map, and pinpointed leading (future) and lagging (past) KPIs for each. “It’s a collaborative, iterative process to take all the indicators and boil them down to a meaningful few,” said Crawford. “We used the KPIs we agreed on to create a scorecard the leadership team reviews every other week.”
“Honestly, none of us knew what KPIs were,” said Cranker. “But once they were explained to us, we started to think about what is important for our growth and what we needed to do to get known on a national level.”
A real transformation — and an enduring partnership
The results of Carbide’s transformation journey have been impressive on multiple levels. The company has seen a jump in profits — from 3-4% net to around 12% — and 100% growth in sales.
Even more important? The change in attitude.
“I have had people come in here and say, ‘Man, I saw you before. Now, you guys are a completely different company,’” said Cranker. “We’re thinking national; we’re thinking growth, strategic. And everything just runs smoother. There’s no way we could have done that without WMEP.
“I was leery about a consulting group wanting to change who we are,” Cranker added. “WMEP saw what we were, allowed us to be who we are, but polished us to become better. We have a great future ahead of us, and we are going to continue with WMEP because there’s so much we still need to learn.”
Company: Carbide Grinding – Gorilla Mill
Innovation: WMEP’s transformational productivity assessment
Website: gorillamill.com
