Fontaine Trailer Company | Haleyville, Alabama
Company Information:
Fontaine Trailer Company manufactures flat bed trailers in Haleyville. Founded in 1940 in Birmingham, the company expanded in 1964 when the Haleyville plant was purchased. There are currently 331 employees at the Haleyville facility. Fontaine Trailer Company is a member of Fontaine International Incorporated, which is a member of the Marmon Group. The Marmon Group, an international association of autonomous manufacturing and service companies, is located in Chicago.
Situation:
Fontaine struggled with workplace organization. Some areas were extremely cluttered. There was no standard location for tools, equipment and materials needed to produce trailers. Some shifts cleaned and straightened better than others, but there were no standards across shifts as to what needed to be cleaned and organized. Fontaine did not have an understanding of 5 S, a systematic approach to sort, set-in-order, shine, standardize and sustain in order to achieve workplace organization. They did not have a 5 S checklist or an audit system.
Center Assistance:
ATN-UAH facilitators worked with a team of 13 employees from Fontaine in a 5 S kaizen event focusing on the flooring, painting and finishing areas of Bay 2. The areas were initially audited at the first of the week using the ATN-UAH standardized 5 S audit procedure. The team ranked a variety of items based on the number of problems they had, ranging from unneeded equipment present to the cleanliness of work surfaces. An area with 5 or more problems would get a score of 0 and an area with no problems would get a score of 4. The same audit was performed at the end of the event, after the 5 S process had been applied to the problem areas. The initial scores before the 5 S process were 29, 28 and 20 out of 100.
Results:
After the workplace organization, scores improved to 47, 73, and 70, a 113-point increase (32%). A standardized rotation schedule for the audits was also developed. The team determined when to audit, who will audit and who is responsible for making sure the audit is performed. The group developed an understanding of 5 S and the methodology behind it. Also, each area developed a daily 5 S checklist. ATN-UAH will work with Fontaine on a series of kaizen events in 2004.
Client Comments:
“5 S is the foundation for lean transformations. The team made a remarkable first step towards Fontaine’s ultimate goal of becoming lean through hard work, open minds and great attitudes.” – Michael McNairy, ATN-UAH lean specialist
“Now that our workplace is organized, we won’t waste any more time finding the materials we need to get the job done,” said Jim Simister, vice president of operations at Fontaine Trailer Company, “We’ve made a tremendous first step to becoming a lean facility.”