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Vermeer and Miller Team for Lean Welding
- Production rate increased by 37.5 percent on Vermeer’s lean "model line."
- Raw materials turned into finished goods in days, not weeks.
- Year-over-year safety incident and severity rate reduced by 10 to 15 percent.
- Zero long-term corporate debt. Vermeer paid cash for more than 300 Axcess™ multi-MIG welding systems from Miller.
- After implementing Axcess systems and lean principles on its terrain leveler line, the number of non-conforming welds caught by internal audits dropped by 500 percent, from 6.68 to 1.36 welds per measurement period.
Customer Testimonial
“Miller is doing many of the things that Vermeer dreams about in our lean journey. These include:
• Supplier-managed inventory
• Daily on-line inventory replenishment
• Building to a customer order, rather than to a short forecast
• Ability to build and ship products in one day
• Same-day shipping of replacement parts
• Some circuit boards built in-house
• A flat, responsive organizational structure
• Employees at all levels empowered to make decisions
• Line employees engaged in managing their own areas of business”
— David Landon, manager, weld engineering, Vermeer Manufacturing Company
Application
- Manufacturing industrial construction, environmental and agricultural equipment.
Key Business Issue
- Finding a welding supply partner that understands and embraces lean manufacturing principles.
Challenge
- The stereotypical relationship in many industries involves customers, equipment manufacturers and distributors haggling with each other over price. Anticipating the point of negotiation often inhibits each party from understanding each other's needs, goals and long-term objectives
Previous System & Process
- Competitive pulsed MIG welding systems and old equipment from a variety of vendors.
New Solution
- Miller Electric Mfg. Co.'s Advanced Manufacturing Systems (AMS) group and its Axcess welding systems featuring the Accu-Pulse pulsed MIG process.
Results
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After selecting Miller as its lean welding partner, Vermeer standardized on one product (300 Axcess systems) and one process (Accu-Pulse) for all of its production welding. As a result, Vermeer was able to:
- Simplify welding training.
- Provide flexibility when deploying welding talent in different areas.
- Improve operator performance (higher production rates with fewer errors and better morale).
- Eliminate sources of variability between welding stations and shifts.
- Simplify and streamline maintenance by greatly reducing parts count; maintaining 300 welders of the same design enables Vermeer's maintenance managers to become very proficient.
- Change the typical vendor-supplier relationship into a vendor-partner relationship where each party contributes more to the value chain and benefits accordingly.
