Success Story

Watson Engineering

Taylor MI
200 employees

Pictured: (l to r) Chuck Watson, Vehicle Service Manager and Dave Watson, Manufacturing Manager

Efficiently increase production throughput to meet new customer orders

Savings and cost avoidance total of $5.6 million

Watson Engineering employs more than 200 within 154,000 square feet of industrial space located in Southeast Michigan. As a full-service manufacturer, Watson is capable of fabrication, laser cutting, tube bending, robotic welding, stamping, design, tooling, fixture-build and vehicle services.

Armed with data from the MMTC operational assessment and MMTC guidance, the Watson management team formulated an 18 month Lean operational improvement plan. Per Dave Watson, Manufacturing Manager, “Working with the MMTC, we were able to completely transition from batch processing, where we would forecast and build 6 to 8 weeks of product where it would sit and wait, to a build-to-order model. Now we get orders and move them through the system so that there is no idle inventory. The most a product waits is 5 days before being shipped to a customer. Our inventory turns have increased from 6.5 to 26, resulting in huge cost savings for us.”

Watson Engineering began directly supplying Caterpillar in the 1990’s with a portfolio of eighteen products and anticipates that growing to nearly two thousand. “Before implementing Production Preparation Process (3P) with MMTC, our thought was to expand our building by 30-70,000 square feet to fully meet anticipated new orders. Now, after 3P, we have almost 68,000 square feet of excess space within our existing footprint. CAT engineers, who are well-versed in lean, were here and they were impressed by our plant floor re-configuration, improved product flow and inventory control,” stated Dave Watson.

For more information, please contact us at 888-414-6682 or via email at inquiry@mmtc.org.