A NJ-based manufacturer of electrical devices for the power industry was acquired by our client, a leading global technology company. Though the acquisition brings the NJ-manufactured device onto the global stage, the only way to compete in the European market is through price. But because the client was unwilling to sacrifice quality for the sake of price, they needed to find a way to radically cut costs while producing a safe, high-quality product. They turned their focus to the NJ facility’s production space, where an aging building design led to quality control issues. Because the existing facility was not equipped to regulate temperature or humidity—two essential components to the product’s manufacture—they relied on rented refrigerated tractor trailers (reefer trailers) to manually control the environment. When the device became too hot, they would stop production, put it into the reefer, wait for it to cool down, then resume production. This led to costly delays and a high rejection rate during testing. Our client turned to CP to help them modernize the space and create greater efficiencies to minimize production delays, boost device acceptance rate, and, ultimately, drive production costs down.
The team began by partnering with the plant’s manufacturing engineers to understand their challenges relative to the space and the strict environmental regulations of the property and surrounding areas. Despite the physical limitations of the space, the team devised a series of engineering solutions that addressed the temperature and humidity control issues—within the existing footprint. They installed AC units to cool the room where the parts were being produced, insulated the walls and doors (including a large overhead door), and fully isolated the space from other areas—all without ever stopping operations.
The modernized manufacturing space is now equipped to produce more parts, with better quality control and significant cost efficiencies. Thanks to American ingenuity, the client is now able to sell a high-quality device at a low price in the European market against its Chinese competitors, who are competing on price alone—with a lower-quality product. Meanwhile, the design improvements have had a ripple effect on the local NJ economy. Not only is the manufacturer’s current employment base growing to accommodate the increase in production (thereby creating more jobs locally), but those jobs have also increased in value as workers’ proficiencies continue to expand to include more tech-based skills.
The project was successfully executed without imposing any negative impact on the environment, and the resulting efficiencies led to a massive reduction in waste from product rejects.