The Company
Rex Roto Corporation specializes in developing and delivering products that solve specific customer needs by utilizing their custom engineered, high temperature material systems and industry standard refractory products. Rex Roto is one of the largest manufacturers of custom vacuum formed ceramic fiber products in the world. Their South Hill manufacturing site is just one of three strategically located U.S. facilities since the Virginia opening in 1985. This American owned and operated company has grown to include customers in nearly every state in the U.S. and over 25 countries. Their diverse product line serves dozens of industrial and commercial markets with over 4,000 unique applications.

The Situation
Management's goal is to keep pace with industry growth without increasing their workforce nor acquiring additional shop floor equipment and still increasing overall throughput. Their production model is a three stage process: vacuum casting parts; oven drying; and finishing operations involving sawing and packing operations. One obstacle in their way was a perceived bottleneck at the oven stage for one particular growing product line.

The Response
Rex Roto's management brought in VPMEP Project Manager Dr. Victor Gray to assist their engineers in decreasing process variability and implementing a Quality Management System. Gray facilitated a production team, which developed a Design of Experiments to see if, in fact, the oven was the bottleneck. It was found that the oven drying rate could be improved. The oven still had at least 25% unused capacity. The purpose of the Design of Experiments was to identify variables, which may be causing throughput inconsistency.

The Results
After oven process improvements were complete, the bottleneck then moved to another production stage - the finishing and packing step. Gray suggested that Kaizen lean techniques be applied to improve operations at the finishing process. Changes were made to the finishing saw design and area layout to move the bottleneck back to casting where it is desired to be managed and scheduled. As a result of this project, Rex Roto increased throughput by 40-50%, increased awareness of potential for process improvements, -reduced floor space for finishing and packing by roughly 50%, and experienced a potential savings of $85,000 from not having to purchase a new oven.

Management's Comment
"I have found that the ability to leverage the high level of technical expertise that is available in a variety of areas from VPMEP is critical to our continued manufacturing improvement efforts," stated Randi Dikeman, Plant Manager. "A smaller organization like ours just can't maintain the breadth and depth of technical abilities that VPMEP can bring to work with us. We have great folks who wear a lot of different hats, but adding specific expertise and experience where and when needed is a key asset to any small manufacturer."

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