Textile Company Turnaround

The Situation

A large textile company making well-known brand products in household and industrial markets was experiencing increased competition from international companies entering the local market and started losing market share and even with the cutting of overheads, managed to make a loss of $2 million at the end of that financial year.

The Solution

They needed to find ways to increase outputs and decrease operational costs. KEPNERandFOURIE technologies were chosen as one of the ways to do turn the company around.

They appointed a Continuous Improvement Director, trained four KEPNERandFOURIE program leaders to transfer required capabilities to their critical mass within six months, and trained eight facilitators to help the staff and management to facilitate and resolve priority concerns quickly.

PriorityWise sessions were conducted to determine the following:

1. Those problems that had the highest impact on production levels i.e. downtime, rejects, changeovers, warrantee claims.

2. Those problems that were causing the highest cost factors i.e. rework, breakdowns, excessive maintenance costs, recurring problems etc.

3. Those factors that would address the market share issues.
The problems were ranked from the highest impact to the lowest impact and project teams plus a facilitator were appointed for the first nine priorities.

The Result

Within the first three months the workforce addressed the first nine priorities and resolved eight of them with resounding success and noticeable impact on the bottom line.

They improved equipment and machine availability by 35% with a major impact on production throughput and reduction in the cost per unit. Within one year, this company turned themselves around from $2 million loss to that of a $6 million profit before taxes.