Precision Escalator Reaches New Heights with NJMEP’s Lean Manufacturing

Precision Escalator of Kenilworth, New Jersey is a 20-year-old manufacturer of escalator parts, elevator products and moving walk components for all makes and models. With over 80 employees and annual sales of $12 million, the company inventories the largest parts solutions selection in the industry.

Precision Escalator’s founder, Greg Maroukian, began with a goal of delivering a few high quality products that would enable service organizations and mechanic customers to complete their jobs correctly and efficiently. In this way, the company helped its customers to maximize escalator and elevator unit uptime and client satisfaction. Continued growth led to Precision’s current role as a worldwide provider of thousands of product solutions for all facets of replacement, refurbishment, safety updating and reconditioning.

Precision’s Director of Manufacturing, David Singh, initiated contact with NJMEP in 1998. Following various proposals and responses, Precision’s new QC manager scheduled a visit by NJMEP Field Agent Paul Myerson. While giving a tour of their plant, Precision representatives expressed an interest in ISO 9000 and Lean Manufacturing. The QC manager had a background in ISO, and Field Agent Myerson was able to identify areas where Lean Manufacturing techniques would benefit the company.

In September 2001, Myerson performed a Lean Opportunity Assessment, which later led to a DOL-assisted Lean Transformation Project (for which Myerson helped to process the application). He also spent a lot of time “macro-managing” the project to ensure its successful completion. Jerry Lynch of Sigma Design served as the third-party resource throughout the project.

With assistance from Precision’s Singh and Engineer Ken Christiano, NJMEP trained as many key Precision employees as possible in Lean concepts. From that point, smaller, focused teams were created to make improvements in more manageable increments.

The time frame of this undertaking was from April 2004 until June 2005. Precision has expressed interest to Myerson in applying for a DOL ISO grant.

“We used Lean to realign our shop floor,” explained Singh, “which was a major undertaking. We moved our finished goods warehouse to free up more shop floor space so we can utilize the cellular layout plan we developed through Lean,” he continued. “We were also able to reduce our cycle times in our machine shop and reduce lead times in our roller manufacturing department. This has led to greater customer satisfaction, cost reduction and improved employee morale.”

“I feel the Lean training we’ve undertaken has set us in the right direction,” Singh observed. “The training was instrumental in bringing all the shop floor personnel up to speed with Lean business concepts.”

“Our intention is to stay competitive against domestic and foreign manufacturers in our marketplace, and I feel the Lean training we’ve undertaken has set us in the right direction,” he summarized.

“We’ve completed our Lean training here at Precision with the help of NJMEP and Jerry Lynch,” Singh concluded. “I sincerely thank both for all their help.”

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