Bescast is a modern, precision investment casting facility for the aerospace and land-based gas turbine turbo machinery industries. Founded in 1945, the Willoughby, Ohio-based company specializes in cast air-foil configurations with a heavy emphasis on gas turbine engine and compressor components. Key product offerings include: integrally-cast compressor wheels, turbine wheels, turbine nozzles, fuel pump impellers, shrouded gas compressor impellers and combustion swirlers.

www.bescast.com

To better position the company for growth, Bescast leadership recently looked to improve and stabilize the delivery performance of all product lines. Company officials also wanted to develop the management team to be more proactive, especially as the company began to grow and expand.

Specific delivery and velocity goals were established to guide the improvement initiative:

• Increase supermarket health 90 % on a progressive schedule 
• Establish Kanbans for supplies and materials to prevent outages
• Identify in-process lead times in all functional areas and develop metrics
• Increase capacity by 15 % 
• Improve EBIT by 25 %

While Bescast was a successful company, the leadership team recognized greater potential. Due to intense production demands, both management and employees were spending more time firefighting than improving business practices. As a result, current issues or challenges were often solved by heroic measures through costly overtime hours or altering production schedules to meet customer demands. Additionally, product rework cycles were often high due to the complexity of the process or product. Meanwhile, many of the frontline practices were inefficient and rudimentary, further slowing production cycles.

Definity Partners aggressively addressed the Bescast’s challenges with a strategic approach for sustainable improvement. Performance measures were established for each department. Specific goals, along with instant feedback, helped employees realize the immediate impact of their work.

Employees across all levels of the organization now are communicating effectively. With better communication techniques in hand, the frontline workforce now expects that management will respond to issues. As a result of the new energy within the organization, champions are emerging and becoming role models for their colleagues. Continuous improvement teams have been implemented in order to sustain these changes.

An increase in overall profit provided indisputable evidence that the improvement initiative was a success. Other notable and quantifiable benefits included:

• 18 percent productivity improvement
• Backlog reduced by 13 percent
• 184 percent return on investment (ROI)
• 6.5 month payback period

Equally or perhaps even more important than these impressive quantitative measures was a more qualitative result. The Bescast leadership team noticed significant changes with their people. They witnessed a cultural change, with employees throughout the organization demonstrating more ownership in their work. They were feeling more empowered and more motivated. Bescast invested in their people to leverage internal knowledge and improve company performance, and the initiative snowballed.