AVCON Corporation

AVCON Corporation, located in Toms River, manufactures and markets structural, maintenance free, railing systems. They combine the world's most durable thermoplastics with steel and advanced engineering details to ensure strength, safety, impact resistance, superior color retention and zero maintenance.

AVCON contacted the NJMEP after reading an article about them in the newspaper. Once on site, the NJMEP Field Agent conducted a QuickView™ that showed that they were lacking the ability to track the process flow and production time from receipt of a customer job order through the shop floor build, clean and packaging process.

The NJMEP Field Agent recommended that AVCON's productivity would be improved by using an intensive and focused approach to improve the manufacturing process - A Kaizen Blitz. Two days were spent educating the employees on the Kaizen and manufacturing improvement concepts. Over the course of the two-day training, elements of the new process were implemented and verified.

As a result, they have reduced the cycle time on the rails from approximately one week to two or three hours, reduced travel time from 500 lineal feet to 180 lineal feet and productivity has increased 20%. All of this occurred during a growth cycle, in which the company's sales have soared by 50%.

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