New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NH MEP) recently featured Filtrine Manufacturing Company, a drinking water equipment and chiller manufacturer, in one of their success stories. Filtrine was invited to participate in NH MEP’s Principles of Lean Manufacturing onsite training in 2021. Turner Hansel, President of Filtrine, jumped at the chance saying “[Our] customers wanted things faster. So we looked into our processes to see where we can cut down our time.” One area he identified was the engineering stage of the chiller manufacturing process. Hansel said that he wanted to streamline the process and thought that Lean Manufacturing would be a good way to achieve that goal.
A NH MEP Lean Manufacturing trainer led an all-day hands on workshop at Filtrine’s headquarters with Filtrine employees. Hansel was one of the willing participants who were organized into a fictitious manufacturing company. Through a series of activities, the groups practiced Lean techniques. The knowledge they gained helped them implement Lean principles throughout Filtrine’s manufacturing processes.
Hansel was very pleased with the outcome saying, “The most important way Lean helped us was to streamline our engineering so our products get out to the shop in a shorter amount of time. This gives us more time in production to make sure our products are of the highest quality for our customers and get to them on time. Lean is a continuous process of improvement and we are still making changes today based on what we learned in NH MEP’s Lean training.”
The success story then listed eight results of the training at Filtrine which included retention, higher sales, investments in new manufacturing equipment, and more.
