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PLANT TOUR: Thursday, November 9, 2006 Joy Cone Company

Established in 1918 as the George & Thomas Cone Company The Joy Cone Company, based in Hermitage, has the distinction of being the worlds biggest ice cream cone company. They make the cones for 90% of the dairy queens in the United States. Last year, their sales netted more than 50-million dollars! These tasty treats are big business. The joy cone company is one of the Shenango Valley's biggest employers, providing jobs to at least 450 people. They also have a second plant in Flagstaff Arizona. In fact business is so good the company just added a 115-thousand square foot warehouse and they are currently installing an automated storage and retrieval system. They can store cones as far as the eye can see!
It is today the largest ice cream cone company in the world, baking over 1.5 billion cones/year. The City of Hermitage has worked with us in helping us with this expansion, and they've been very helpful. Many of our workers are from Hermitage, the Shenango Valley and Eastern Ohio." Most importantly, the company is now a S.O.P.
While the George family owns 60% of the business, employees own 40% under an employee-stock-ownership plan. “Employees have ownership in the company: Not just in their wages, they actually benefit in employee stock. So as we grow, as our stock price rises, their retirement package rises."
Something else that makes this company so successful: its machine shop. They make their own ovens for some of the cones. Nabisco, Friendly's as well as McDonalds and Dairy Queen are their key clients.

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Rick Denison:  The Goal (The Movie) and Viable Vision  Tuesday May 9, 2006

Rick Denison is a Business Consultant in Youngstown, Ohio.  He is an experienced Operations and Logistics Professional with applied knowledge and hands-on experience in leading change in companies through Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints.  This experience has been obtained through 20 years working and consulting in a diverse range of manufacturing environments and products.  Rick has a strong background in Process Improvement, Change Management, Project Management, Information Systems Implementation, and Profitability Analysis. 

Rick has a BS in Business Administration form the University of Wisconsin.  Rick has been trained as a Jonah by the Goldratt Institute in 1993, as a Six Sigma Black Belt by General Electric in 2003, and TOC Application Expert for Operations and Logistics by Goldratt Schools in 2005.  In the past, Rick has served as a TOC Project Manager for an integrated titanium corporation, a TOC consultant and project manager for an advanced profitability analysis software company, systems analyst in several ERP implementations, and has held various leadership and line rolls in production management and production planning.  Rick has industry experience in Primary Metals, Circuit Board Manufacturing, Computer Chip Manufacturing, and Aluminum Die Casting.

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Greg Toporcer  Moen,   Doing Business With The Chinese  Tuesday, January 24, 2006

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Farukh Naqvi  Advance Planning and Scheduling (APS)  Monday, November 14, 2005

MRP/ERP utilization has led to improvements in planning and execution of manufacturing plants. One shortcoming of the MRP/ERP solution is the handling of Supply Chain constraints resources: Machine and People (facility capacity) and the capacity of the supply chain: raw materials and Transportation. Contributing to the difficulty is the amount of changes that can occur over time in a supply chain. These changes can quickly invalidate the most diligent MRP/ERP plan. Advanced Planning and Scheduling was developed to enhance the capability of planning while considering the constraints of an organization and of the supply chain.
APS systems utilize advanced algorithms to create multiple scenarios of the plan and then allow management to choose the best plan as the official plan. These systems utilize memory resident methods to process the various scenarios so that as changes take place, and plans can be updated quickly to optimize supply chain planning.
In this session we will be looking at the definition of APS, what type of companies use APS, and what is required to run APS and a Case Study of a Cleveland company utilizing APS.

Farukh is a Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management professional with 10+ years of progressive and diverse experience in Forecasting, Production & Distribution Planning, Procurement, Inventory Management, and Cost Management, in many challenging, diverse, and dynamic environments. He has utilized many lean manufacturing principles as well as VMI, JIT, KanBan, GMP, ISO, along with exposure to the FDA regulated environment.
He also has extensive and progressive background in implementing PLM, ERP, MRP, MES & Supply Chain solutions. He has a Masters of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Louisiana and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering at Osmania University (Hyderabad). While he is active in many professional organizations, he has certifications with APICS, the Society of Manufacturing Engineering, and the Society of Logistics Engineers. He is currently employed (since December 2002) as a Supply Chain Consultant with Alpha Net Consulting.

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Plant Tour Heinz Field Pittsburgh, PA  Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

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Tom O’Boyle, Miles Technologies RFID: Hands-on demonstration  Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

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Plant Tour Delphi  Reflections of Abigail Repphun  Tuesday November 16, 2004

The tour was really interesting, and there were many aspects of the plant that I did not know about before going on the tour. First we went into a conference room to get a brief overview of the plant and how things worked. We found out that there are only 32 people working on the floor per shift. Then we were divided into groups of about 15 and taken on a tour of the plant. Our group's first stop was the Tool Room. This is where the maintenance of the machines takes places. They do preventative maintenance on them do they do not run into as many problems with the machines.
The second place we stopped at was Material Room 1. There are two material rooms; the second one is a mirror image of the other. Material Room 1 has 60 machines that contain the nylon materials. These materials are then sent out to the floor where they are molded in certain machines. In Material Room 2 we were told that the same type of operation goes on, but the materials in this room are polypropylene and polyester. If there are mistakes made in the molding process the materials get sent back to these rooms and can be heated up, broken down into their original form, and remolded, because these thermo-plastics remold.
The third place we visited was the Central Material Distribution, and it was broken down into two regions, Region 1 and Region 2. In Region 1 there are nylons, and high temperature materials. In Region 2 there are the polypropylene and polyester materials. They have Metro link valves in this area. These Metro link valves are a new technology, and they are the first in the U.S. to use them.
The fourth place we stopped at was where they had their Servoelectric Machines. We could not hear what the man was speaking about very well and there was not a poster board with descriptions. So the only information I got from this part of the tour was that these machines are faster than the ones at their other plants, they make less noise, they use less energy, and produce less waste. These machines were also 16% more productive than the ones at the other plants.
The fifth part of the tour was Finished Goods. There are three steps to this area. First, the storage goes to an automated storing area. Second, a customer specific label goes to direct ship area. Third, there is a quarantine area for extra quality inspection. There is also a scheduling system in this part of the plant. It tracks usage, transit time, and inventory position. There is also warehouse management which has RF technology. These are the scanners and electronic display units. In this area we also learned about the FROGS that were traveling around the plant. They have 11 of these, and FROG stands for Free Ranging on Grid. There were 7000 little magnets on the floor that direct the FROGS on where to go. These FROGS were self charging, and delivered parts from each machine station to the storage area.
The sixth area of the plant we visited was Benchmark Operation Standards. Here they hold the information about employees, tool cleaning, quality reports, and all of the machines are on one network. The problems with the machines are displayed on large scoreboards so they can be quickly fixed.
The seventh and final area we visited was Injection Molding. This area had performance improvement from previous plants. There were 1.4 billion parts that got to over 100 customers worldwide per year. And they have world- class quality on all that they produce. This concludes the plant tour. I found it to be very interesting, and the best part was learning about the FROGS. It is amazing the amount of technology that is used in this plant.

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Plant Tour Schwebel's  Tuesday May 13, 2004

The Youngstown chapter of APICS thoroughly enjoyed our plant tour of Schwebel's on Tuesday, May 13th. The tour lasted about an hour. All of the employees not only were enthusiastic about their jobs but were receptive in explaining and demonstrating their job duties. We are proud to have such a service-oriented and high tech company residing in the Shenango and Mahoning Valley area and beyond. We wish the Schwebel's Company the best for another century of service to our communities. Our thanks go to Schwebel's Barry Solomon, Director of Purchasing and Karly Fedor, Tour Director.

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The Chapter Development Committee (CDC) launched a chapter needs assessment survey on March 22, 2004. The survey consisted of five parts with 43 questions consisting of 215 variables. The survey was e-mailed to 1,962 chapter volunteers on March 22, 2004. The survey closed on April 5, 2004 and achieved a 32 percent response rate (630 responses from 1,962 chapter volunteers). The objectives of this survey were to determine volunteer leaders. needs and wants and to identify volunteer leadership opportunities. An action plan will be developed based on survey feedback.

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Dr. Ken Killen, C.P.M.:   Supply Chain Management: Myths & Realities  January 2004

Dr. Ken Killen spoke to a large group representing both APICS and NAPM at the January PDM, It has been several years since the two groups last participated in a joint meeting, and this event was a huge success, with 45 attendees. Dr. Killen's topic was appropriate for both groups as he introduced the general topic Supply Chain Management. For this evening, Dr. Killen concentrated on the portion of the supply chain dealing with supplier relations and how to gain a leverage when you are a smaller organization. As usual, Alberini's served an excellent meal, making the entire evening one of the best.