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EWI

About EWI

Since its founding in 1984 as the Edison Welding Institute, EWI has focused on innovative material joining technologies for many types of companies and branches of government.  EWI capabilities include Joining Processes, Materials, Structural Design & Integrity, Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE), and Testing and Evaluation.

 

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, EWI employs approximately 150 associates and serving over 1200 member company locations.  From this same location, EWI also operates the Navy Joining Center (NJC), a Navy Mantech Center of Excellence, which assists the Navy in improving affordability of its systems.


As North America's foremost institute for the exploration of practical welding, bonding and joining processes in manufacturing, its team of recognized experts and support staff are dedicated to advancing and deploying new materials joining technologies to businesses around the world.

 

http://www.ewi.org/



Business Needs

Henry Cialone, EWI’s President since July 2005, understood that a continuous drive to improve the business would generate the results that were desired. He envisioned a company with a world-class look and real time performance measurements that the employees owned.  He envisioned truly empowered employees working as a team and a company capable of record levels of performance, and results.  Henry decided to reorganize the entire business and invest in his employees to improve operations and EWI’s ability to serve its customers. This meant that the company had to foster greater opportunities for employee development and a self-motivated workforce.

 



 
 Immediate Challenges

EWI is a small but growing not-for-profit R&D organization.  Its President and CEO Henry Cialone saw a need, brought on by growing pains, for the organization’s processes and systems to be improved.  Many of the internal processes were informal or implied and would not support a growing company’s future demands.  In addition, he wanted to improve employee morale and teamwork through training and trust building, and to create a culture of continuous improvement.  When a member of his Board of Directors shared his own company’s experience with MMS, Henry recognized an opportunity to begin EWI’s journey toward becoming the world leader in high-value, marketable materials joining technologies.

 

Improve management controls
  • Ensure awareness and understanding of requirements set forth both explicitly and by reference in contracts
  • Increase information sharing – associates need to be able to access information easily (standardize/simplify)
  • Provide a feedback loop to ensure things are being done correctly

Create, improve, and document robust, professional processes

  • More professional, business-like procedures away from the informal, implied current processes
  • More checks and balances to allow empowered associates to make decisions while enabling management to meet its obligations
  • Less bureaucracy



 
 Definity Partners Plan

Many of the processes that serve internal and external EWI customers were analyzed for improvement. Actions taken to support this endeavor included:  flowcharting processes, eliminating waste, standardizing best practices, try-storming, choosing the right tools, creating SMART goals, improving communication through daily huddles, implementing the 5S system, creating champions of change, and celebrating successes! Policies, processes, and systems reviewed at EWI with MMS’ assistance included:

 

  • Contracts training
  • Centralization of policies and procedures
  • Contract operational profile          
  •  Project management system improvement
  • Equipment and material management, including equipment labeling
  • EWI code of conduct
  • Organizational efficiency and structure
  • Time reporting   
  •  Internal auditing
  • Business/market opportunity assessment
  • On-boarding (new hire) process

 

 



 
 Results

Today EWI associates…

 

  • Have a greater understanding of how their individual goals and performance are linked to their customers’ needs and EWI’s objectives
  • Are encouraged to empower themselves to identify obstacles, analyze problems, and push forward with self-generated solutions
  • Have confidence in today and optimism for their future

           

EWI’s “new normal” now includes using continuous improvement as a competitive tool to better serve its customers and its associates…

 

  • Everyone and every decision focused on the customer
  • Increased awareness of doing the “RIGHT” things
  • Ownership and action without management intervention
  • Streamlined processes
  • Increased enthusiasm
  • Pride in what they are doing, where they are going, and prospects for the future
  • Modeling leadership behaviors to develop the desired culture

 

 


 
 Continuous Improvement

Since the time of our engagement with EWI, the company has:

  • Created a permanent staff position for internal process improvement
  • Maintained an improvement items capture list, which is reviewed and prioritized bi-weekly with the management team
  • Tracked and reported a "rate of change" metric with their actual as of January 2008 being 48 to a goal of 36 — an eight fold improvement over the previous year
  • Continued improvements on the company's proposal process, including the reduction of 27 process steps down to three and full integration into their existing sales software
  • Continued focus on celebrating success, both formally and informally — including lunch celebrations and handwritten thank you notes

 



 

 

What they had to say

“What I like and why I was sold, is their passion for getting things done early!”

–  Henry Cialone, President & CEO, EWI

 

“The process (of the focused effort) was pretty much as expected, but the magnitude of pace and intensity was unfathomable!”

– Frank Jakob, Continuous Improvement Manager

“What we’re doing is creating value for our customers by shoring up our processes. I see it as an entire re-engineering exercise of continuous improvement.”
– Mike Sewell, Contracts Manager


“MMS’ Hands-on approach was a great resource.  It's one thing to be handed a set of tools and told to go use them, but it's much more impactful and sustaining when you have the experts show you how to use them. This also fosters empowerment in a supportive way.”

– Lisa Austin, Manager, Corporate Communications

“People are focused on moving forward, not dwelling on the past. People feel involved in the solution.”
– Mark Matson, Director, Human Resources

 

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