GlasCraft is known around the world for dispensing excellence. As the world's leading designer
and manufacturer of advanced application equipment for the fiberglass composites, foam, and coatings
industries, GlasCraft has already implemented lean manufacturing as a means of encouraging expansion
and supporting growth. Working with TAP's Manufacturing Extension Partnership, GlasCraft was able to
reduce on-site inventory and work with its vendor base to create a steadier flow of product. Then as
a result of moving to a cellular manufacturing process, within 12 months the company was able to reduce
standard cycle times from 15 days to less than 5.
"We're a small company in a huge market and I've only got 25 people on the shop floor, so any time those
people are not assembling product, we're not making money. The biggest piece in this project was the
empowerment of those employees on the floor. All of them were included in the training sessions, which
really helped them buy into the program. We'd have a number of hours of class time and then go out on
the shop floor and make it happen — we were seeing results immediately. Plus, we were doing all this
training during normal hours — we didn't stop production — so while all this was going on, we hit 12
straight months on budget. We're blowing away our quotas.
There's no way I could have accomplished this myself. We couldn't have done this without Purdue and TAP."
— Neil Crebbe, Director of Manufacturing and Production Processes, GlasCraft