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Target Second Issue 2010
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Target Second Issue 2010
7
Leadership
hope that it will sell months later.
In Brief
Smarter Cutting
Some say the United States has lost the game when it comes to manufacturing
high-labor-content products. Though labor costs are higher here, said lean veteran
Len Egan, “We can win on every other front — delivery, quality, matching changing
demand, responding to the customer, and effective use of materials.” GoodGlove
USA LLC. is putting this premise to the test, manufacturing baseball gloves in
Massachusetts using a combination of lean methods.
The GoodGlove story started with
Jim Devaney and his son, Rob, who
manufacture high-end women’s personal leather goods and other products in Worcester, MA. Jim Devaney
was insistent upon making their
entire personal leather goods line in
the United States, but knew he needed higher labor efficiency and greater
speed to market to overcome China’s
labor cost advantage. Rob had heard
about Len Egan’s success in applying
lean to sewing and other labor-intensive processes.
Egan’s experience with lean goes
back to the 1980s when he visited
Aisin Seiki, a Toyota affiliate, in
Japan and saw in action the sewing
system (called TSS), based on
Toyota’s continuous flow JIT system.
Egan was so impressed that he negotiated the rights to bring TSS to the
United States, learned the system in
detail, modified it to fit the American
workforce, and helped U.S. companies, primarily in the apparel industry
initially, apply it successfully. Since
that time he has expanded it to other
labor-intensive processes.
The Devaneys had asked Egan to
visit their plant in Worcester to discuss
a lean implementation for the production of their Abas-brand personal
leather goods. The Devaneys were
excited by their conversations, and
Rob Devaney shared that excitement
with one of his friends — a manager at
the manufacturer of Nokona high-end
gloves in Texas.
Coincidentally,
Nokona was looking for more production output to meet growing sales, but
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had exhausted the labor pool in its
small Texas community.
Out of this confluence of personalities, skills, and discussions, Egan
and the Devaneys teamed up with
Nokona management in mid-2008 to
start GoodGlove USA LLC, the
Massachusetts-based baseball glove
factory that would supplement
Nokona’s Texas plant’s output.
Because of the lean process, Nokona
was also able to introduce new gloves
at lower price points and still be
American-made.
A Good Fit
Finding a place in this supply
chain was a good strategic choice for
several reasons. The Nokona brand
identity was long ago established
among serious baseball and softball
players. Not only is Nokona a madein-the-USA product, but it also has a
reputation for high quality and excellent leather. Retailers were happy
with Nokona, which had a keen
understanding of their needs.
Another advantage for GoodGlove
was that manufacturing domestically
with a flexible just-in-time process
meant the company could quickly
make what the market wants, unconstrained by what is in a warehouse or
a container ordered months before.
Retailers only want to stock what is
selling, so they don’t have to mark
down or write off inventory.
GoodGlove could invest in product
they can ship and bill immediately,
not pay for way in advance with a
The leather-cutting process can
be a bottleneck and a waste-generator. Hides are irregularly-shaped and
vary greatly from animal to animal.
They must be cut one ply at a time. It
takes skill to identify and mark off
unusable areas of each hide, those
with branding marks, scars, soft
stretchy areas, and so on.
Pattern pieces must be arranged
differently on each hide for optimal
material use. That consumes time for
working out the best leather savings,
or adds bigger scraps for the waste
bin. To do this, the operator positions
the metal glove dies — which cost up
to $5000 for a complete set — on the
leather for each piece of the glove,
then clicks them out with a highpressure press. A different set of dies
is required for each different part and
style variation and size of glove produced. Mixing models and sizes in
the production plan requires swapping out sets of dies, which also must
be stored, kept organized, and kept in
repair.
To address these problems,
GoodGlove management found an
automated cutting system that could
increase material utilization 5-10 percent over the traditional manual methods. With materials making up 55 percent of the manufacturing cost of a
glove, and leather the most costly item,
that’s a significant advantage.
Even with the new system, it still
takes a skilled human to look at the
hides and decide which areas are
unusable. Those are marked using a
crayon that enables the cutting
machine to “see” what to cut around.
Instead of an inventory of dies,
GoodGlove’s cutting system has a
library of electronic patterns in memory, which can be retrieved instantly
to make whatever glove is desired.
While a traditional manufacturer may
pay up to $1500 per die or $5000 for
a complete set when a pattern
changes, GoodGlove’s patterns can
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be modified easily to take out labor or
improve product performance. Jim
Devaney said, “When you have
invested $5000 in metal cutting dies,
one is reluctant to make a small
change and incur another $5000
investment. It really holds you back
on continuous improvement. When
we want to improve glove patterns,
the very next glove we cut can incorporate a change.”
According to the models in the
production plan, the cutter’s software
retrieves the appropriate pattern and
automatically determines how to lay
out the parts on the hide for the optimal yield, faster and better than a
human could do it. Because there are
no physical dies, pieces can be placed
closer together, further increasing
material savings. The software then
drives a high-speed knife that cuts
out the pieces and punches the lacing
holes in the case of a baseball glove.
The Human Touch
In a typical operation, gloves are
made in large batches, transferred
from workers branding the cut glove
parts to seated sewing machine operators to assemble it and to others lacing it. Workstations are some distance apart, with large amounts of
work in process (WIP) in between.
Throughput can take weeks.
At GoodGlove, continuous singlepiece flow — which accommodates
variation in team member speeds —
can handle any downtime and
ensures quality results. The glove’s
lining is made up, then the outer
shell assembled, then the glove
turned, the lining inserted, and shell-
lining joined, then all the lacing is
done, and the glove finished with
shaping, spraying, and packaging.
“With the amount of labor involved in
preparing
materials,
branding,
sewing, lacing, and finishing processes, you have to minimize the handling, which may represent as much
as 80 percent of the time involved in
actual sewing,” said Egan.
Each glove is assembled in a Ushaped line of stand-up workstations, staffed by a team of seven. The
cycle actually starts at one end and
flows through the team to the completion of a product by the final team
member. After doing a final comprehensive check of the glove to ensure it
meets specifications, that person
then takes over the product of the
next upstream team member and so
on back to the beginning.
Each
Key Takeaways
Success Factors
Entrepreneurship: All the principals involved were outwardly-focused, actively
seeking ideas and collaborators. They found opportunity in an industry others
thought was dead — manufacturing labor-intensive baseball gloves in the U.S.
Supply chain: Supply chain partners can leverage each other’s strengths.
GoodGlove was able to provide additional capacity Nokona lacked. Nokona had
the distribution network and market knowledge that GoodGlove lacked.
Brand: By supplying a recognized and successful market leader, GoodGlove didn’t have to invest in marketing to create awareness and brand identity, as it
would have if it had entered the market on its own.
Industry knowledge: Jim Devaney’s experience and contacts in the leather
goods industry enabled him to get the right materials at the right price. He also
knew how to use materials better than the competition with specialized equipment that automated pattern management and cutting.
Process knowledge: Len Egan’s long experience in applying TSS to high-laborcontent products was easy to adapt to glove making.
Private-public relationships: Credit for capital equipment purchase, recruitment
assistance, and training funds came in part from state agencies. Rob Devaney
worked with social agencies and local community-based organizations in
Worcester to identify and hire qualified employees. It’s worthwhile to ferret those
out in your state and local community.
Respect for people: A diverse workforce received training in both hard and soft
skills. They earn market-level wages, plus benefits and gainsharing.
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Leadership
Support is Where You Find It
Len Egan advised companies to investigate ways to get help paying for investments in plant and people. Massachusetts provided low-cost loans to pay for the
electronic cutter and conversion of equipment to stand-up operation required to
run single-piece flow.
Local social service agencies and community-based organizations
helped GoodGlove find employees who were eager to learn and had few preconceived notions about how work is done. Egan said, “They are terrific with their
manual skills, learned fast, strive for the best quality, and follow the system.”
By putting unemployed people on the payroll, the company was eligible for Massachusetts workforce hiring and training grants. “This system
involves far more process and product training than in a batch system where an
individual is doing just one task all the time, and you just couldn’t do it without
such outside support,” Egan said. “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has
been a great partner, and we plan to give them a great return on their investment
by taking people off unemployment and making them taxpayers at the same time
as they help us generate taxable company earnings.”
Egan shared this tip: To find support for your business, start at the U.S.
Department of Labor Employment, and Training website (www.doleta.gov/business), where you will find links to federal, regional, state, and local sources of
help for businesses. Also check with local community colleges. Many are savvy
about grants and make good training partners.
member adds value and moves
sequentially through the steps in
their “zone” until the person ahead of
them takes over again. When the
member at the first step of the
process releases the product, he or
she goes back and starts a new glove
into the flow. It’s always balanced,
always flowing, and there is only one
product per person in process at any
times. There is never a product sitting idle, never a member unable to
keep up, all without making WIP. “It
sounds simple,” said Egan, “but it
requires engineering every flow, having adequate and the correct machinery, being able to accommodate style
variation, and then training members
to keep working until they give up
their product, so the team must have
broad cross-training. That training
takes longer, but you then have a very
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flexible team to handle any style variation. And there are added benefits
ergonomically in doing different tasks,
such as standing up and moving.”
Because few major volume gloves
are manufactured in the United
States today and none were in Massachusetts when it started, GoodGlove
hired to train. All team members were
learning the product — none had
made a glove before. Many were
learning to deal with leather for the
first time, and the machinery was
new to them as well. Each worker
had to master the steps in the work
zone he or she covered including
steps before and after for added balancing, to perform them safely and
correctly to the required quality specification. The focus was not on speed,
but on getting the steps right every
time. “We made many irregulars in
the training process but were not
going to ship a glove until it was first
quality,” Egan said.
Once workers learned the steps in
their own “zones,” they learned tasks
in other zones, starting with the
adjoining ones, so they can rotate
positions and be more flexible. The
team can then decide among themselves who covers what area.
After learning the basic steps of
making the glove, team members
received training on the single-piece
flow process. Employees had to understand why they should not start work
on a new glove or part but instead do
the next task on the glove they had in
hand, and why their own speed, while
significant, was less important initially than performing each operation correctly. Speed of the overall process
would come with experience.
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Finally, members learned about
functioning together as a team, handling conflicts, contributing to process
and product improvement, and
addressing other work issues. As the
team met levels of accomplishment in
terms of quality output, members
earned four training bonuses that
added up to more than $150 each.
Team members check each glove
for defects before working on it, and
then perform self-checks after each
step. The product moves to the next
step only when the prior steps have
been finished correctly. With immedi-
ate checking it is easier to make a
repair and avoid adding value to a
defective product.
“Our first team began in July,
2008 and were making good quality
gloves by late August and with very
good speed by the end of September,”
Egan said. “Today, they produce at
more than double the speed found in
a typical batch system, because of
their training, their personal effort,
their great work ethic, the minimized
handling, and their team orientation.
“We have gotten a great workforce,
and they have adapted well to single-
piece flow and quality glove making,”
he continued. “Our product is very
consistent, and we are making it better all the time. Our employees have
great input on how we can make
tasks easier and better. They are our
first resource when we want to try
new changes. We will develop the
changes, often with input from them,
then make prototypes and get their
feedback on the manufacturing
process. Often they will have suggestions to improve the change or how
it’s handled.
“We use a pay structure that gives
Len Egan and TSS
Len Egan and his company, America’s 21st, have been helping companies in the apparel and other highlabor-content industries compete successfully in North America since the late 1980s. That was when he
visited Aisin Seiki, a Toyota affiliate, to negotiate an agreement to distribute industrial sewing machines
in the United States. His hosts arranged for him to see the sewing equipment used in a plant, but Egan
saw more than that. He discovered a manufacturing process vastly different from what he considered
the norm. Work moved one piece at a time instead of in the large batches customary in the U.S. apparel industry. Workers were standing and moving with the product instead of sitting at machines making
work-in-process inventory. It was TSS at work.
At first he wasn’t convinced that single-piece flow could be more efficient than the batch system.
The pace was methodical and consistent, but not fast in appearance. The batch systems he was familiar
with moved almost frantically, but he realized that much of that motion was really waste — picking up
and putting down pieces task-by-task as required by batch systems. He also saw the faster throughput, better ergonomics, workflow balance, minimizing of inventory, space savings, and the ease of management and administration.
“That drove me to want to study it further,” said Egan, “to understand its efficiency. With some added analysis and overnight faxes
back to the States to compare rates, I found it was actually far more efficient, given the reduction in handling — often the major part of
manual tasks — within and between steps. There were few if any material handlers, reduced storage, and reduced work transport. Faster
defect recognition made for immediate correction, thus better quality. I asked for the rights to bring the system to the States as part of
the machine distribution agreement we were negotiating.”
Egan said, “The good folks in Japan were skeptical. Their attempts to get Americans interested in the system had failed. They said,
‘You Americans like working in batches with employees doing just one job all day. You like buffers and inventories which you even call an
asset.’ I persuaded them to give us a chance, studied the system with them, and brought it to the United States in 1989.”
To begin to implement TSS, said Egan, “We had to develop everything. We engineered stand-up adjustable tables, new tabletops —
because machine placement was different — new pedals and controls for stand-up use, electronic scoreboards, and trouble lights. We
found the best mats and other accessories — there was no existing infrastructure. We then developed new training programs to shift the
culture.”
Egan said that companies make the transition relatively easily. At first, operators worry about standing up all day, but as they adjust
physically to the standing and walking, they like the change and say they feel healthier and as they adapt to multi-skill expectations they
are more interested in the work.
Since the 1980s, Egan and his Americas 21st, Inc. team have helped companies use TSS to compete effectively. Although sewn products were initially his focus, he now helps companies apply the principles to mechanical assembly, distribution, printing, and many other
industries. He is a partner in Americas 21st, Inc. in Greenville, SC and sole principal of L. J. Egan Associates in Cataumet, MA, which provides lean engineering, consulting, training, and related services such as to GoodGlove USA and other companies.
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Target Second Issue 2010
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Leadership
Nolan Ryan once said of his childhood: "You
knew you had arrived when you were able to
get a Nokona baseball glove."
— Baseballgloves.com
employees a fixed market-competitive
wage and then provides a gainsharing opportunity based on our success
in producing quality gloves. That
comes as a weekly bonus, which can
eventually represent 20 percent
above regular fixed pay,” said Egan.
“We base gainsharing on finished
quality gloves shipped, and always
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based on demand, rather than speed
at doing an individual task as in old
piecework systems that only generated WIP and longer leadtimes. We have
also provided a good benefits package
including insurance, vacation, holidays, and other paid time off that
adds about 25-30 percent more value
to pay.”
Egan continued, “Although our
labor cost might be as much as ten
times higher than in some other
country, our efficiency, our material
savings, our speed to market, our
ability to respond to the retailer
immediately, our ability to customize
for the retailer or consumer, and our
style flexibility as well as our capability to continuously and immediately
make improvements all make us a
winning team.”
Editor’s note: Thanks to Nokona and Bill
Lillie, production manager of GoodGloves
USA for their photo contributions.
Karen Wilhelm is Target contributing
editor and publisher of the blog Lean
Reflections.
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