As the recession kicked into high gear two critical events forever changed the course of events for Impact Imaging.  First, a competitor dropped prices to buy market share.  And second, Mike Miller, a member of the Impact Imaging Board of Directors started a campaign to implement a quality program.  Kim and Dan Griesemer, who are the cohesive husband and wife team that run Impact Imaging, knew that dropping prices to match the competition would be painful but loosing the customers they had worked so hard to acquire was simply not an option.  They entered the fray and when the dust settled, Impact Imaging had reduced their prices by two thirds to retain their valued customer base.  Now it was time to move on.  Kim said that:  "to survive we felt we had only two choices: to either cut guts out of our business or grow it and try to make it up on volume."  To add gas to the fire, Mike Miller of the board, continued to push a quality initiative.  Both Dan and Kim felt that taking on a major new project was out of the question."we simply didn't have time."  Mike pressed the issue and let them know that he was convinced that if they didn't make changes he suggested that Impact Imaging would be "dead in a year and a half."  Dan and Kim heeded his warnings and started studying their operations.  They quickly realized that there was a lot of waste.  "We knew that there was something wrong, but we didn't have any idea what it was or how to fix it.  We only knew that we were making mistakes." 

Solution

About this time one of the employees approached Dan and Kim about attending some Lean Manufacturing training that was being offered by the MEP.  They quickly agreed to send some key people to the training.  Dan says that, "everybody was pretty thrilled with the outcome of the class."  Two additional groups attended the MEP training so that virtually everyone in production had been through the class.  When a group of employees from Australia came to town, they were also sent to the MEP training. 

Impact Imaging wasted no time implementing what they had learned.  Per Dan:  "it was an absolute nightmare to produce our product.  We were moving it all over the plant without giving any thought to flow."  Kim adds, "If we had to put a string where we started and stretched it to each point in our process there would not be room left to move because we crossed paths so many times just to get one job out the door." 

Having operations spread out between two separate buildings compounded the problem.  It didn't take long to realize that operations needed to be consolidated into a single structure.  It was decided that a large roof would be built to enclose the open space between the two separate buildings.  This way the manufacturing operation could be combined into a single building. 

The roof was built.  What had been two separate buildings was now combined into a massive, single structure.  Employee teams started laying out the production lines in the new facility, paying special attention to the materials flow.  With the new plant layout, raw materials now come into receiving, move straight down the production line, into the shipping department, and onto a truck to the customer.  Virtually all WIP inventory and finished goods inventory has been eliminated.  Once a job starts, it doesn't stop until it's shipped.  Impact Imaging now competes on delivery time as well as price and quality.  Customers ordering Impact's premium Flex Express product are guaranteed it will ship within twenty-four hours or it's free. 

Employees
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