Multina

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :31/10/2007 07:03:54

Sitting pretty

Originally known as a manufacturer of seating for transportation applications, Exec US discovers that Multina USA is a lot more than that now

Written by Ruari McCallion and Produced by Michael Townsend

If you’re going to establish an all-new manufacturing location in a brand new territory, upstate New York isn’t the first place that would come to mind. The conventional move would be to the Far East, Eastern Europe or Latin America. But Multina chose to establish its US center in Plattsburgh, NY.

“There’s a lot of transportation business located in the US,” said Jack McGrath, vice-president of operations for Canadian-owned company, Multina USA. “We’re big suppliers to Bombardier, who have a plant in Plattsburgh, where they assemble railcars for the Long Island Railroad, the Chicago Transit Authority and for New Jersey among others. A certain amount of American content is a requirement for railroad and local government work.”

Multina’s began as a seat manufacturer and its products are found on recreational vehicles, like snowmobiles, jetskis, ATVs and electric golf carts . In mass transit, the company has expanded into total integration of passenger compartments, including seating and its accoutrements, like finishing shells and waste bins, as well as walls, ceilings and on-board restroom modules. It’s looking to expand into flooring, as well.

“We’re seeking to become total integrators for our customers. As well as Bombardier, we now supply to Kawasaki, Yamaha and Novabus, and we’ve been building flight simulators major components for CAE in Montreal, Canada,” he said. The progress has been a combination of Multina’s own vision and customer request. The core of its original operations is molded FRP (fiber reinforced plastic) and polyurethane which are found in transportation seating but also used in wall and ceiling finishes, in the case of FRP. Molded polyurethane is an effective and lightweight insulator.

Building the Lean Machine

“We began by making component parts, then we undertook preassembly and the more we grew our activities, the more our customers asked us to do,” said McGrath. “Our president, Jacques Nadeau, had the vision of the company becoming a one-stop shop. We were getting a certain amount out of each train and bus we were involved with but, if we could get together with our customers on co-design, work closer with them and apply the tools of Six Sigma, Lean and repetition, we were convinced we could become their supplier of choice.” Things seem to be progressing well. Multina works with Bombardier’s railcar and leisure businesses and it makes components for Prevost and Novabus, which are made by in Canada and Volvo Bus at its plant in Mexico, where Multina also has a facility. The company has developed an approach that has a lot in common with auto production methodology.

“In our railroad train business, we build complete modules, like the restroom module and send it over to the Bombardier plant. They pick it up with a crane and set it right in place. Then they install the wall modules we’ve sent over, then the seating, ceilings,” he said. “They tell us what they want, when they want it and we deliver, just in time (JIT). We have a major focus on sequencing, so modules arrive in the right order, ready to be slotted into place. We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Bombardier to learn sequencing and to improve our business processes. We carry out exercises to decide how to deliver and run operations lean and efficiently. We work with them on design and, many times, we co-design.”

Establishing the plant in New York State was a necessary commercial decision but it wasn’t taken lightly. Labor costs are high, investment in automation – which reduces ongoing overhead – is expensive. For the Plattsburgh plant to work, to survive and prosper, Lean, Six-Sigma and other effective improvement tools are essential underpinnings, under the leadership of Pierre Chapdelaine, director of continuous improvement. Working with new materials is an inevitable consequence of extending Multina’s reach along the value chain.

New materials, new methods, repeatability

“We began with molded polyurethane and RTM but we now work with ply-metal, plywood and composites. We’ve developed totally automatic processes that will be state of the art,” McGrath explained. “One of our designers came from another industry, where he used to teach Six Sigma. We’ve taken all that he knows and applied it to our operations. We use Design of Experiments, so we know we will have a good, repeatable process; we practice kaizen and try to poke-yoke as much as possible.” The company also optimizes parameters, so that it knows where the control limits are, and where it needs to look for improvements – or to solve problems. “It’s effectively Six Sigma process control. We’re seeking to achieve Six Sigma and to understand CPKs – our process control capabilities – to understand variability and control it.”

Improvement is partly about mindset and that’s one of the reasons McGrath was invited to join Multina, two years ago. He came as a Lean-certified Six Sigma black belt, with the task of leading Multina to the next level.

“The workforce has embraced the concept. The plant manager is now a black belt and our formal programs continue to take the production processes forward. We’re leaning out the rest of the plant; we identify the processes to take out using Lean tools, then use Six Sigma. We have help in doing so through the Value Innovation Partnership,” he said. “When you undertake the Lean Enterprise approach, a lot of things emerge. The good parts come initially from the manufacturing floor; then you look at support areas.” The ‘ hidden factory’ is often in the admin and support areas.

What you need – not what you want

“It’s challenging but we have had good experiences,” he said. “When we undertook value-stream mapping, we found 92 percent of activity was non-value added. Some are necessary but we found a lot of waste, which customers don’t want to pay for. We have our value stream map and we also have our future stream map, which is the route to get there.

The most difficult areas are the admin and support functions.” And a lot of those are embedded. Everyone at Multina is included in Lean training and, immediately afterwards, they all get it – but out on the floor, suddenly there are cries of ‘I really need this’. There is a need to be firm and reinforce the message.

“If we have a takt of one car a day, why do we need elaborate planning and financials? When you get to a pull system, the suppliers know they need to keep kanbans up, we know how many beats there are, we don’t need extensive planning activities to tell us,” McGrath said. At one stage, the payroll was 50/50 manufacturing/support; it’s now at 66/33 but that’s partly because it’s ramping up: the proportion will reduce. “We have faced the burning platform. Our business is changing, there are no big multi-year contracts any more.

We can’t be competitive with US labor rates – but we can with innovation, design and cost drive-down. We’ve gone through pain and fear – when moving to Lean, the lack of WiP, inventory and finished stock can be worrying but the good results are becoming very visible.

We have 15 new contracts coming in between now and 2009; we’re good for the community – and we’ve had tremendous help from local and state government agencies, with grants, incentives and help with improvements. Plattsburgh is going to be a growth engine within Multina.”