Company Profile

BioTek Instruments, Inc. is a global leader in the development, manufacture and sale of microplate instrumentation and software. The company's origins date back to 1968, when Dr. Norman Alpert, a physiologist at the University of Vermont Medical College, founded BioTek. Dedicated to providing test equipment solutions for the hospital safety and quality assurance markets, BioTek's Biomedical Division grew to become one of the largest and most successful companies in the field. Looking to expand into a growing Life Science market and capitalize on the increasing popularity of non-isotopic immunoassays, BioTek entered the microplate instrument arena and in 1981 introduced its first microplate reader. Since then, BioTek has emerged as a global leader in bioanalytical and laboratory systems. With the sale of the their Biomedical Division in 2002, BioTek today is completely focused on microplate instrumentation, automation and software and continues to be a privately held, family-run organization.

Situation

BioTek was looking at two critical business situations, increased customer demand and increasing production costs. Due to the nature of BioTek's world-class products, customer demand had been steadily challenging the utilization of the organization's resources. In order to improve and sustain the customer satisfaction for its products, BioTek needed to consider improvements to all business operations.

Solution

BioTek had been successful in the past with using Lean Manufacturing techniques in parts of the business. However, BioTek recognized the need to implement Lean techniques in all parts of the business, and decided to work with the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center (VMEC) and begin implementing a Lean Manufacturing System in the machining department. After some employees attended a Principles of Lean Manufacturing workshop, VMEC facilitated a Value Stream Mapping session. This became the foundation for implementing the Lean Manufacturing System techniques in the machine shop. Once the Value Stream Map was created and improvement projects were identified (kaizens), implementation began right away. VMEC and BioTek continued to work together on kaizen implementation. Despite being extremely busy with customer orders, the team at BioTek continued to implement changes. While implementing significant improvements in the machine shop, other business areas started their improvement initiatives. Shipping & Receiving changed the layout and flow of their area while technical assembly areas looked at their production flows.

The recipe for success at BioTek was simple: hard work; making the time for improvement projects, strong support and investment by ownership as well as senior management, and employees willing to experiment with new process techniques. BioTek is not finished with its desire to have world-class business systems for its world-class products. Identifying and improving all areas of the business will be a never-ending mission for BioTek.

Results

Machine Shop

50% reduction in set-up hours per machined component, overall 3.5% reduction in total components cost, 150% increase in CNC machine tool life.

• Creating a "visual environment" to display tooling; simplified set up with pictorial diagrams.
• Standardized work practices from work center to work center to promote employee movement from machine to machine.

Reduced paperwork by creating visual queues for reorder of raw material and machine components (Kanban Process); this also resulted in reduced computer transactions by thirteen to one.

Improved overall work environment in appearance and provided all necessary needs for Machinists to perform their jobs effectively.

Stockroom / Shipping & Receiving

Improved material process flow from assembly to packaging and into stocking, requiring a total reconfiguration of the work area.

• Created visual environments for picking of high-use parts.

Assembly Shop

• Combined two high output product lines into one.
• Visual queues for supermarkets within assembly lines.
• Created one-piece material flow.