Success Stories

Bender points to other marked improvements in productivity. For example, Delmaco fulfilled a 960-piece elevator reel job in May that required 39.34 hours in labor. “After DEMEP training, we ran the exact same job in July and the labor hours were 29.76,” Bender says. “This shows a significant improvement in our efficiency.”

“We believe learning best practices and becoming a world-class operation are worth the investment,” Moore says. “It pays off in future productivity and better morale.”

DEMEP compiled meticulous value stream maps on such key processes as estimating and bidding jobs. The goal is to eliminate waste—any steps or processes that do not contribute to the bottom line—from the work flow.

“We needed to learn how to process more projects for our customers both faster and at less cost,” says Aileen Huester, vice president of operations. originally rolled out in Japan, 5-S focuses on effective organization and standardized procedures to simply workflow, reduce waste and eliminate non-value-add activities during production while increasing quality, effectiveness and safety.

DEMEP training helped the attorneys and staff to identify and analyze the firm’s processes through an approach known as DMAIC – as in Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control – which was ultimately translated into such streamlined processes as litigation pre-suit and pre-response investigation check lists.