Who the company are

Penn Engineering is a high precision engineered fastener manufacturing company, which began manufacturing and trading in Galway in 2001, when it bought Precision Steel Ltd.  In 2006, Penn transferred its European warehouse facility from Doncaster, England to Galway and in 2007 also began R&D on the site.  In 2010 the company initiated a focus on the automotive industry which is now the largest consumer segment (approx.. 30%).

 

During 2017 the company consolidated its main primary manufacturing processes (screw machining, cold forming and cold heading) into a new 80,000 sq. ft. facility close to its existing presence in Mervue Business Park.

Company Name
Penn Engineering Fastening Technologies (Europe) Ltd

Address

Mervue Business Park, Mervue, Galway

Website

www.pemnet.com

Consultant

Cordatus Consulting

LeanPlus Project Objectives

Pilot of Lean principles in transactional departments, via roll out of Yellow Belt programs (two phases) to over 10 employees.  Four improvement projects selected in customer service, planning and quoting departments, with the goal to achieve cycle time improvements, eliminate non-value add work and waste from selected areas.

Key Challenges

Cultural Change.  Lean thinking and continuous process improvement has to become our philosophy.  It is challenging to transform behaviour of employees where everyone works in a collaborative manner, identifies problems in processes and proactively seeks to find solutions by using problem solving methods.

Key Changes

Understanding of lean principles, language, tools, methods, A3 DMAIC problem solving framework, waste, process mapping and non-value add activity identification.

Results

Soft savings: customer satisfaction, process cycle time reduction.  Understanding of lean principles, language, tools, methods, A3 DMAIC problem solving framework, waste process mapping and non-value add activity identification.

Quote

“Working with IDA staff on our first Lean Start programme has been an incredibly enriching experience.  Their support, advice, project coordination has been invaluable and professionally enriching.  EI/ IDA organised quarterly lean events motivate us to continuously persevere and strive for better results.

 

The Lean Start programme has enabled to introduce lean principles to a number of transactional departments, and complete four cost reduction and efficiency improvement projects.  In addition, the programme set these departments on a continuous improvement journey.”