Silver Eagle Manufacturing featured in Oregonian

Hitching on to efficiency

Monday, September 27, 2004
Brent Hunsberger

Juan Vela hangs his power tools neatly on a peg board, each one outlined in black paint so he knows when one is missing. He marks one outline with a strip of masking tape scrawled with the words "On Loan."

Vela's "shadow board" is one of the ways Silver Eagle Manufacturing Co. in Portland strives to practice lean manufacturing, a high-efficiency concept made famous by Toyota and gaining popularity in Oregon as manufacturers try to stay profitable in an increasingly competitive global economy.

Silver Eagle, which makes converter dollies that hitch truck trailers together, as well as cargo trailers for the U.S. military, decided to try to boost productivity and efficiency in January 2003 after landing a record order. The company's payroll had shrunk from 150 workers in 1998 to 40 in 2002, thanks to a slump in the U.S. truck market. Then, United Parcel Service ordered 2,400 dollies for delivery in 2003, twice as many as the company had made in one year.

Eventually, Silver Eagle hitched on with the Northwest High Performance Enterprise Consortium, a group of 34 manufacturers bent on infusing lean manufacturing in member factories. The group gets training and consulting help from the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a nonprofit that receives federal grants to teach lean-manufacturing techniques to companies.

Silver Eagle officials say the shadow boards -- a basic lean-manufacturing technique -- have nearly eliminated tool theft and cut down on the time workers squander searching for misplaced C-clamps.

"Lean means eliminate waste," said Gary Gaussoin, the company's president and largest single owner. "Eliminate anything that doesn't add value. You can start with the simplest things."

For example, workers clean work spaces after shifts to make it easier for co-workers to use visual cues such as colored carts to guide production.

Silver Eagle still has plenty of improvements to make, lean-manufacturing experts and company leaders agree, including honing assembly so workers don't have to repeatedly stop to inspect their work. But lean techniques already have catapulted the company's production capacity from eight to 25 dollies a day, company workers say.

Brent Hunsberger: 503-221-8359;
brenthunsberger@news.oregonian.com