Marineland

Marineland Commercial Systems in Bossier City, Louisiana manufactures, sells and installs high-performance, in-store aquatic merchandising systems for top retailers. The Bossier City division was founded in 1995 and was purchased by the Rayovac Corporation, now Spectrum Brands, in January 2005. The public company employs 30 people in Louisiana and its headquarters is located in Moorpark, California. Their products are sold internationally.
   
Marineland Commercial Systems was implementing lean manufacturing at their Moorpark headquarters through the California Manufacturing Technology Center (CMTC), which is one of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership organizations located in California. Based on the success of this partnership, Marineland's Director of Operations, Robert Frost, recognized the need for improvements on the production floor at its Bossier City facility, and how a Lean Manufacturing Program of continuous improvement could achieve those goals. The company contacted the Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Louisiana (MEPOL) for similar assistance at their Bossier City facility. 
   
MEPOL began by helping Marineland obtain funding for their Lean Manufacturing Program through the Louisiana Department of Labor's Incumbent Worker Training Program (IWTP). Once funding was approved, the lean manufacturing training and implementation consisted of:

• 1) Lean Manufacturing Overview and Training
• 2) Value Stream Mapping Training and Development
• 3) Hands on Implementation of Lean Initiatives
• 4) Analysis of Data
• 5) Advanced Value Stream Mapping and Analysis
• 6) Advanced Implementation of Lean Initiatives

Initial Lean 101 and Value Stream Mapping training took place in February 2005, lead by MEPOL's Lean Team staff that included project directors Alan Martin and Mike Scott. All employees were involved with the training activities. The following week, a Kaizen Event was held making a major Facility Layout change and setting up a production line based on the actions developed in the Value Stream mapping. During the layout change, approximately 5000 square feet of floor space was made available for future product lines. Subassembly cells were created along with a Kanban system to control the flow of materials. Shadow boards were designed and implemented to organize the tooling. Point of use storage was utilized to reduce travel distance for retrieving supplies and raw materials. Additional follow-up training was delivered in May 2005, and in January, March, April, and June of 2006.

"The Louisiana Marineland facility received initial ‘Lean Manufacturing' training in February of 2005 and began to experience the preliminary benefits of conversion from a push system to a pull system within 90 days," said Robert Frost, director of operations. "With continuity of the MEPOL facilitating staff, combined with regularly scheduled enhanced Lean training, the Louisiana plant evolution was reinforced and nurtured into this new Lean way of thinking about our daily processes."

As the company implemented Lean Manufacturing, an additional product line was brought in to the Bossier City facility. The second production line was set up by the employees based on their training and experience with the original Lean deployment. MEPOL then assisted in making further improvements in the areas of 5s, POUS, Pull/Kanban, and Cellular design.

Through the lean implementation, the company has experienced the following results:

• 5000 square feet of space was made available to add additional product line
• Increased throughput of existing facilities and personnel on the original product line by 66%.
• The company received over $35,000 in funding from the Louisiana Department of Labor's Incumbent Worker Training Program to pay for the Lean Manufacturing Program.
• Increased employee involvement.
• Contributed to a company culture that promotes continuous improvement.

"After our in-depth Lean training, we feel that we are well positioned to carry on the Lean logic in thinking about and planning to meet our manufacturing challenges," Frost said. "We expect to enjoy continued productivity and process improvements into the future as additional Lean training identified, engineering developed, features are incorporated into our product line."

Hebert Honored with National MEP Award
The Grand Ballroom of the Marriott World Center in Orlando was the stage for Cecile Hebert, marketing coordinator for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Louisiana (MEPOL), to garner a national award at the MEP National Conference, held April 26-30, 2008.

Hebert took home the Newcomer of the Year Award out of a pool of 16 nominees from across the United States. This is the second year in a row a MEPOL employee has received this prestigious award.