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Wood Digest reported on Jofco International’s entry into the world of lean more than a year ago. Since then, this innovative southern Indiana office furniture company has realized significant improvements in lead time reduction, on-time delivery, manufacturing space utilization and reduced labor costs. Now, we revisit Jofco to get an update on how its lean program was implemented and how employees were educated on the aspects of lean.

As is the case with many manufacturing companies, the lean journey for Jofco International hasn’t been seamless. Still, with a well-thought-out program that required complete buy-in from all employees, Jofco has reaped the harvest of the lean seeds that were planted about two years ago.

Before its venture into lean, Jofco was one of many custom office furniture manufacturers producing a wide range of products in an automated manner. Still, its on-time delivery rate was just 75 percent, and its typical lead time was seven weeks. These facts were unacceptable to company officials.

This was before lean consultant Leroy Morrow of Basic Lean entered the picture, according to Jofco vice president of production, Mike Steurer.

“We realized we had a long way to go,” says Steurer. “We also realized early on that we had a big challenge in the area of changing the company culture so employees would totally embrace lean concepts and implementation.”

Most employees bought in to the program, but some didn’t, Steurer says.

“Unfortunately, some of our associates didn’t totally grasp what we were trying to do, and some resisted our efforts,” Steurer recalls. “Some left our company because of this.”

The company’s furniture and seating products are used in financial institutions, professional offices, insurance companies and manufacturing offices, and organizations that prefer natural wood furnishings. Specific products include, but are not limited to, a wide selection of desks, executive “L” and “U” units, credenzas, workstations, vertical storage units, bookcases, file storage, conference room furniture, computer support furniture and occasional tables.

Jofco began operations in 1922 as Jasper Office Furniture Company at its current headquarters in Jasper, Ind. In 1965, the company name was abbreviated to Jofco, Inc. Now in its fourth generation of privately held family ownership, Jofco has changed with the time. Case in point is the adoption of lean.

With all the internal changes associated with lean, the product offering by Jofco has not changed to any degree.

As Steurer reported last year in the early story on Jofco: “We’re mainly a custom producer of office furniture and seating. We hold no finished goods inventory and produce on an order-by-order basis.”

Thanks to a then new custom box making system, the company has virtually eliminated keeping any inventory of premade cartons. Each box is made just as each piece of furniture is inspected before shipment.

“We’re still a vertically integrated operation in our case goods line. Most of the seating frames are purchased as subassemblies and then assembled, finished and upholstered,” he says. “The orders are coordinated by a master scheduler who takes the incoming case goods and seating orders and schedules according to the number of finished pallets needed for case goods and upholstery hours for the seating product.”

IMPROVEMENTS, CHANGES

Since the lean program was integrated, Jofco has seen the following improvements and changes, according to Steurer:

• Increased on-time delivery from 75 percent to 95.6 percent;
• A reduction in workforce of 31 production employees, nearly all through attrition over the past year, accompanied by increased productivity from the existing workforce, due to lean;
• The freeing up of over 32,000 sq. ft. of production floor space, which allowed Steurer and his team to develop a plan to totally reconfigure the machining area for better flow;
• Engineering offices were moved to the vacated production areas;
• Reduced lead times from seven weeks to five, with the goal of being at three weeks in the next year;
• A “standardized work description” has been written for all jobs;
• Kaizen events have been held with some of the board of directors participating;
• All employees have been through a lean training course organized by lean manager, Joe Furman; and
• Purdue University will teach TWI (Training Within Industry) training to all managers and team leaders over the next six months. This consists of Job Relations and Job Instruction training.

“Our lean program is based on the Toyota Production System,” says Steurer. “Leroy Morrow of Basic Lean comes with 16 years of employment with Toyota in teaching lean.”