No Resting on Their Laurels

Rich Capanola will be the first to tell you that putting together a mattress is not like building a car or even a wristwatch.

"There's nothing really complicated about it...there are no moving parts," he said of the process as he offered BusinessWest a tour of the Simmons manufacturing and distribution

Still, as in any manufacturing operation, there are processes, said Capanola, the plant's operations manager, referring to steps which, if they are not in step, can bog down the entire operation. And in a world where time is money, small delays that result when a missed stitch isn't found until too late in process can lead to big headaches.

Ironing out some of these wrinkles, as part of a program created by Western Mass. Electric Co. in cooperation with the Springfield Area Council for Excellence (SPACE) (see related story, page 39), has been an educational and enlightening experience for Simmons, which recently helped those two groups pass an important milestone.

Indeed, Simmons played host to the region's 100th Kaizen event earlier this summer. Kaizen is the Japanese term for a processimprovement strategy that involves a focused concentration of a specific step in a manufacturing operation. At Simmons, the process was used to reduce troublesome bottlenecks in the mattress-finishing and quilt-and-sew areas. The Kaizens were successful in reducing unneeded movements and wasteful steps, and, therefore, the ultimate cost of producing the more than 125,000 bedding sets that leave the plant each year.

In the process of doing so, employees have gained a new measure of ownership of the plant and its processes, said Capanola. "They're very enthused about this," he said. "The consultant from SPACE said after the first day that he had to hold people back...they just wanted to run out and fix things."

Such employee empowerment and the license to 'fix things' are part of a broader cultural change taking place across the Simmons network of 18 plants in the U.S., said Capanola. The corporation is placing new emphasis on team building and improving communication at all levels. The recent Kaizen events have dovetailed nicely with the emerging new mindset, he explained, adding that the transition is very much ongoing.

Rude Awakenings

This has not been a dream year for Simmons-or any other mattress maker-by any means.

Sales have been sluggish for about 18 months now, and a boost in sales that was predicted for this summer has instead been a non-event. "Summer is the busiest time of year for us-you can normally set your watch by it," said Capanola. "But this year, it hasn't happened."

The company, which would normally be moving about 1,350 pieces out the door each day during the summer, has been averaging closer to 1,000. As a result, the company has cut back its workforce, from 143 to about 115, a 20% drop.

The decline in sales is somewhat puzzling, although with the economy still somewhat sluggish it is understandable that big-ticket purchases such as a new bedding set might be put off, said Capanola, who told BusinessWest that no one in the industry is quite sure when sales will bounce back.

But while people might be losing sleep wondering when business might pick up, there are fewer production nightmares, thanks in part to the two Kaizens, which have produced a 6% improvement in overall production efficiency.

Capanola said the Kaizen experience resulted from what started as preliminary talks with WMECO about options for new, more efficient lighting at the 125,000-square-foot plant. From those talks came discussion about Simmons becoming part of the PRIME (Process Review to Increase Manufacturing Efficiency) program, which WMECO has created to help meet state mandates for reducing energy consumption.

The program targets large energy users, including manufacturers, and uses Kaizen to take individual processing steps and make them run more smoothly.

Jeffrey Scheidecker, executive director of SPACE, which oversees the Kaizens, told BusinessWest that while mattress making is simple, there were areas of the Simmons plant that were being used inefficiently.

"On the surface, there were things that didn't look like much," he explained, "but when things are not aligned properly and processes have to stop because certain pieces are not ready or things aren't where they are supposed to be, it slows things down."

The Kaizens at Simmons, which were coordinated by company employees and managers working in concert with SPACE consultants, looked at every step in the process, said Scheidecker, with an eye toward eliminating unnecessary and, therefore, costly movements, as well as annoying bottlenecks.

"They looked at everything," said Capanola, "including the way materials were moved in, the way tables were set up, the way people were positioned. It was all designed to make things run more smoothly."

An added benefit from the experience is the way in which Kaizen has, by involving employees in the process, given workers a new sense of empowerment, said Capanola. As it has at other plants, Kaizen has helped create a culture in which employees not only do their jobs, but look constantly for ways to do them better.

Spring in Their Step

Capanola said the Kaizen events are part of a broader pattern of change at Simmons, an evolution that affects everything from the number of products being produced to the mindset governing production processes.

He told BusinessWest that the company has cut back dramatically on the number of skews, or different types of products, it produces, focusing increasingly on the higher-end models such as the Beauty Rest line. By doing so, the company may be producing fewer units, but it is increasing productivity because the profit margins are much higher on the premium lines.

Meanwhile, the company is investing in a number of training and educational programs designed to empower employees and make them an integral part of the lean manufacturing process.

"The Kaizens tied in very well to what we've been doing," he explained, "This is a very progressive company. We're doing a lot of things to try to get some involvement from our associates out on the floor. It's been a transition for both our managers and our employers, and it's ongoing."

He said the company's operational priorities have changed, with safety first, followed by quality, service, and cost, in that order. "We use those priority levels in all the decisions we make...we go right by the numbers."

Kaizen is part of the cultural change in that it helps introduce employees and managers to new and different lean-manufacturing techniques and, more importantly, it makes them part of the process.

Corporation-wide, Simmons is initiating a number of efforts to get employees, or associates, as they are called, involved in the decisionmaking process, he said. The long-term goal is to create highperformance work teams.

"We want to get them involved in making decisions, resolving issues, and fixing problems," he explained. "That's what it's all about."

At the same time, the company is involving employees in programs to improve communication within the plant. This is important in a literal sense, he said, in a company where several different languages are being spoken by employees (the company hangs a flag in the production area to represent each nationality within its workforce, and there are currently 20 banners). And it is vital also in a figurative sense, because different departments have to talk with one another if they are to function as one unit.

"It's not just communication skills we're working on, but listening skills," he said. "It's all part of what we call building a new manufacturing culture."

The Rest of the Story

While offering a tour of the Agawam plant, Capanola told BusinessWest about a demonstration of the company's Beauty Rest line of mattresses that took place at the company's Columbus, Ohio facility.

There, Simmons salespeople stretched out on one side of a large mattress while a bus drove over the other. The exercise was designed to show how the line's 'pocketed-coil construction' allows people on one of the bed to remain unaffected by what's happening on the other side.

"It was very effective, as you might imagine," he said. "People were pretty impressed by what they saw."

Today, Simmons is working to make its manufacturing processes equally impressive.

Using a different kind of science, the company is hoping its operations executives can rest as easy as its customers.