Hilltop Products
Hilltop Products manufacture and supply an extensive range of insulation sleeving and heat shrink tubing for commercial and industrial applications. The company are always looking for ways to improve efficiency and have embarked on a lean journey of continuous improvement. They are currently focusing on improving their sales and marketing.
“The use of Value Stream Mapping and other lean principles has challenged the team and succeeded in removing wasteful activity from our processes. Quality and staff moral has improved.”
Pauline Oddie, Operations Manager
Insulation sleeving & heat shrink tubing
Cheshire – 30 Employees
Activities undertaken
Value Stream Mapping
Scheduling
Key Achievements
£387,000 sales safeguarded
£387,000 sales safeguarded
£387,000 sales safeguarded
£20,000 productivity improvements
Cost to Business
None- fully funded
Activities Undertaken
The Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) North West identified that at Hilltop Products it was taking too much time to process an enquiry from the order being placed and processed through to dispatch and the scheduling function was causing problems as some orders were taking up to 3 days per week, in person time.
The improvement process began with a Value Stream mapping exercise (VSM) of the current processes. The mapping work recorded all the processes from customer enquiry through to invoice generation.
This showed there was a lot of wasteful activity in repeated checking, information being passed between departments, the time taken to produce written communication and the waiting time associated with all of theses delays
As a result, a future state was proposed to remove all non-value adding activities.
The team was also trained in different sales techniques which saw savings of up to 4 hours per enquiry as well as creating additional time for new sales generation. Following the training, the company set a goal of getting all orders ‘right first time’.
The company next analysed their scheduling processes. This showed the company forecast extended over 6 months but changed on a weekly basis.
The schedule was altered weekly to reflect the long- term forecast but the information was not used on a regular basis or for any purpose. The company was advised to change their scheduling to take into account the customer’s 10 week forecast. As a result, this saved a total of 2 person days per week.
Results
As a result of the work carried out with MAS North West, Hilltop products has seen the following benefits:
- £387,000 in sales safeguarded
- £20,000 productivity improvements
- 3 jobs safeguarded
The Future
Future activity for the company is to progress with their sales and marketing drive using the additional resources generated from the reduction in non- value adding activities.
