The Company
Cardinal Homes^® Incorporated (CHI) has been a leader in the modular housing industry for over 30 years. Located in Wylliesburg, CHI employs over 150 workers. The company specializes in delivering a highly engineered modular building system for residential and light commercial buildings. CHI’s modular homes are distributed through its two sister companies and independent builders in the mid-Atlantic region. Their clients enjoy the ability to modify any of the pre-designed models or design a custom plan to suit their particular needs.

The Situation
CHI wanted to impact their bottom line performance through a combination of cost reductions and increased sales. They chose lean manufacturing as their continuous improvement strategy and VPMEP as their change agent for the lean transformation process. All key employees had attended VPMEP’s Principles of Lean Manufacturing 101 workshops in preparation for the lean improvements that would be made to the manufacturing and customer ordering processes.

The Response
VPMEP project manager Tom Zbell recommended lean manufacturing concepts to transform plant/office operations for the coming year. Elimination of non-value-added activities was proposed, as well as implementation of:

• visual systems (5S) and workplace organization,
• standardized work,
• supply chain management,
• pull/Kanban, and
• point of use storage.

Positive results from the lean improvements made in the manufacturing and customer ordering processes will allow CHI to be more responsive to customers, provide shorter turnaround times, and to be more profitable. The master plan involves training a core implementation team on lean techniques, jointly developing a lean plan for the enterprise, conducting Kaizen events to implement the plan, and then providing coaching and oversight.

The Results
Visual systems and workplace organization implementation in the office and on the plant floor have yielded:

• reduced search time,
• reduction in purchased and raw materials inventory,
• creation of point of use storage, and
• improved flow of processes supporting the main assembly line.

Future Kaizen events aimed at reducing the paperwork lead-time will yield an estimated 30% reduction in lead-time and an increased quality of design with the resultant reduction in change orders.

Management's Comment
“While Cardinal is at the beginning of its journey toward lean manufacturing, everyone here is excited about the progress we’ve made so far and the possibilities for the future. Lean is one of our key strategies for improvement and growth over the next few years. We believe it will be critical to our continued success and our ability to stay competitive," said Jill Duncan, CHI Project Manager.

"What impressed our Leadership Team most about VPMEP was their demonstrated commitment to our success and alignment with our values. They took time to understand the specifics of our business and what we needed. Then they provided a variety of resources to help us meet our objectives. Our decision to partner with Tom Zbell and VPMEP has proven itself to be a good business investment.”

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