Outcomes
Robotic System Recommendations Potential:
- 6 months return on capital investment
- 2x increase in uptime
- Potential for skilled technician apprenticeship
Adorn and Patrick Industries
Adorn and Patrick Industries
Leading supplier of hardwood products unlocks potential of capital investments and optimizes plant-level throughout
About
Adorn is a manufacturer and high-volume supplier of custom-built hardwood doors, laminated panels, mouldings and pressed countertops to the recreational vehicle (RV) and manufactured housing (MH) markets. Adorn is a subsidiary of Patrick Industries, a leading component solutions provider for the RV, marine, MH, and various industrial markets. Founded in 1959, Patrick is based in Elkhart, Ind., with over 11,000 employees and 160 businesses across the United States.
The Opportunity
Adorn recently invested in a robotic process system to increase throughput and mitigate operational disruptions in its lamination processes influenced by labor market shortages. The company partnered with iNDustry Labs to determine the ROI evaluation of the investment as well as provide recommendations to optimize uptime. Adorn executives also recognized that to fully capture the benefit of the investment, quantifying the process flow bottlenecks on a plant-wide level would benefit operations and set a baseline for future plant optimization investments.
iNDustry Labs Engagement
Through a comparative analysis of the previous, manual process and the new robotic system’s performance, iNDustry Labs calculated a projected ROI based on factors such as labor costs, material savings, and throughput differences. The business case evaluation, coupled with time studies and process observations, resulted in recommendations for specific equipment and technology acquisitions to increase throughput. Over the course of ten weeks, the iNDustry Labs team also undertook a plant-level analysis that involved site visits, interviews, and facility analysis. This resulted in a value stream map to optimize Adorn’s production process. The exercise, along with quantitative analysis of production data, identified high-level, long-term opportunities for process flow optimization to improve throughput and consistency across the plant’s operations.
Neil Schaadt, Business Unit Director, AdornThe first meeting was such a productive meeting, it made me very comfortable to hand over my team to help them to help us. The open communication has been outstanding, and my full Adorn team has felt respected and valued. The iNDustry Labs team has helped to perfect our processes. I am very impressed and appreciative of the team and what they did to help me and my team to focus on the projects at-hand.