Country Home Products produces outdoor power equipment. Their DR (Done Right) brand mowers and trimmers are widely distributed, and their Neuton brand battery-powered lawn mower was a 2009 editor's choice of Organic Gardening magazine. The company was founded in 1985 and employs over 200 people at two facilities in Vermont.

The company needed to add new products to its mix but did not want to spend money for additional space. Instead, it chose to consolidate space, both to save money and to eliminate some scattered facilities. Country Home Products also wanted workers to switch between seasonal product lines. In other words, it needed to use both space and workers more efficiently, as well as launch new products.

In the past, Country Home Products had sent some workers to VMEC Lean Training, but no real changes were implemented by the company in the manufacturing process. Three years ago, facing a lack of manufacturing space needed to launch new products, Country Home Products began to work closely and consistently with VMEC.

As a result of this work, Country Home Products:

• built more products on 50% less floor space,
• saved six figures a year by closing one of its rented satellite buildings,
• shortened delivery times, which increased customer satisfaction and sales. Delivery used to take as long as fifteen days; now it is consistently scheduled and takes less than six days.
• cross-trained workers so they can now move easily between assembly lines.

The first steps in improving Country Home Products' manufacturing process included:

1. reorganization of the assembly lines using flow manufacturing and 5S Visual Systems principles, and
2. development of Job Breakdown Instructions using Training Within Industry (TWI) methods.

Country Home Products began by laying out their manufacturing lines into work cells by product. To ensure a smooth flow of material through the cells, they arranged tasks of equal length at each work station in the cell. This is called the "takt" or pace-time principle: the work flows from one station to the next at a set pace and does not pile up anywhere. Later, they balanced the cell length, assigning the same number of people to each cell. These two improvements increased the efficiency of the individual lines, and also made it much easier to arrange seasonal rotations of workers between lines.

As a next step, Country Home Products implemented the 5S system in their work cells. This system improves workplace organization, set up, and standardization. At the end of the 5S process, the assembly lines were more compact and organized. The new standardization encouraged even further improvements.

Meanwhile, workers were enrolled in Training Within Industry (TWI) for Job Breakdown Structure development (JBS). In this process, workers came together and mutually decided on the best way to do a job. At Country Home Products, the new JBS methods include photos of the key steps in assembly; these photos are posted in the work areas. JBS was instituted first in the Trimmer and Power Wagon areas and is now spreading throughout the company. Since the employees themselves design the JBS systems, they supported these processes from the start. Morale and productivity improved.

As these and other Lean improvements and innovations spread throughout the company, cost savings and quality improvements followed. Country Home Products appointed a Continuous Improvement Coordinator to keep the momentum going and implement next steps.

According to Plant Manager Jim Fay, "We began our Lean journey in manufacturing over two years ago. Don Paul, Bill Kuhns, Dick Morse, Paul Demers and the staff at VMEC have been extremely supportive of our Lean initiatives and have always been there to help out along the way. Although we appreciate the compliments and continued support, and good relationship we have with VMEC, half the fun is knowing that we are far from done and still have a lot of work to do. With CHP's renewed commitment to Lean and support from VMEC, we're confident that we will continue to improve in the years to come."