Domeny Tool was having a real crisis. Marge Domeny, CEO, is a Certified Woman Business Enterprise and the only woman-owned company of its type left in America. Her banker, CPA, and attorney told her to close her doors. Over 50% of the companies in her industry have gone out of business since 2002, and she was witnessing many friends and colleagues filing for bankruptcy. She was losing key customers, facing tight cash flow, had low employee morale, inconsistent productivity, increasing customer demands, competition from low labor rate countries, and rising raw material prices. Seemingly attacked from all sides, Marge was seriously considering closing down after 40 years in business—but she decided to fight back.
Marge attended a Cycle-of-Success Institute workshop at the Woman’s Business Development Center in Chicago. After the workshop, she decided that she must take immediate action and bold steps to save her company. She decided to try the COSi one-year improvement program. She was skeptical, because she had tried many times to turnaround her company and nothing had worked. Her goal was to restore her business and protect the 30 jobs and, in turn, the families that relied on Domeny Tool as their employer. In the first month, she learned to create a specialized team of employees to identify costly problems that needed solving. Marge assembled the team, using the tools taught to her in the COSi workshop and the weekly coaching, and to her surprise, the team identified over 100 costly problems.
After using the COSi approach to prioritizing, the most important problems identified were poor shop floor layout, slow machine setups, excess obsolete and work-in-process inventory, old die storage, substandard tool room organization, disproportionate shipping department errors and flawed communications—and more. In total, these problems were costing the company over $600,000 per year in lost profits, and $1,000,000 in top-line growth opportunities. The first goal was to solve the critical problems that would quickly influence sales, profits, productivity and customers. By the 3rd month in the COSi program, Marge and her team had learned a clear methodology, rapidly solving problems using targeted teams specifically designed for the tasks. She had her employees start solving the top three problems first. Launching three teams with the mission of finding new ways to innovate and correct their assigned problem, each team followed a prescribed procedure, ending with the writing of new standard operating procedures describing the new way of doing the job or task. The employees felt empowered that they could make things better and morale quickly shot up. Marge noticed that employees were excited about having the ability come to work, make a positive difference, and help make the company stronger.
Continuous improvement and innovation became a way of life at Domeny Tool. The company graduated after one year with the tools and confidence to make big things happen. The results after 12 months? Her customers noticed a difference in quality, delivery, and responsiveness, and sales increased by 35%. The bottom line increased by a record 600% (yes that is 600%--no typo), productivity doubled, employees are constantly making improvements, and the production volume increased by 100% without having to invest in more equipment or expand her building. She is now a leader in her industry, she has a much better quality of life, and Domeny Tools continues to utilize the Cycle-of-Success every day.
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