Clock-building exercise helps improve production time

Storm Smart employees learn a lesson in productivity by building clocks. Storm Smart Industries, a hurricane protection manufacturer based in Fort Myers, is using a $71,500 federal grant to teach its employees to be more productive.

The company, one of the largest producers of hurricane safety products in the state, was chosen for the grant because of its track record of growth. The company is adding a third building to its campus on Idlewild Street and is branching out from hurricane safety products to some home care goods.

"We have to get better at manufacturing to increase productivity," says Storm Smart's president, Brian Rist. "As a business owner, you always want to improve methods and the bottom line."

The grant, from the Southwest Florida Workforce Development Board, may also allow them to add new jobs.

"Our goal is to hire more people," says Marketing Director Trent Dunn. "We're in a growing mode. We always have been."

And how will the employees learn to be more productive with this grant money? By building small, plastic clocks. Last week, about 20 employees worked together to produce little timepieces, which are ultimately deconstructed and reused somewhere else.

The clock-building exercise isn't to make metaphorical points such as "time is running out" or "time is on our side." Instead, clocks are an arbitrary product used to demonstrate basic principles of manufacturing. They can be applied to making just about anything, says Neil Kagan, one of three teachers with the Florida Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a wing of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Mr. Kagan came to show employees how to build the clocks with a process called "Lean Manufacturing," intended to cut down on disorganization, paper work, chit chat, and any other red-tape that can slow a company's production time.

The first hour of the day, the employees were thrown to the wolves and asked to build the clocks with no instruction. Every hour, they took a break for a classroom session with three teachers from the government. Then by the end of the day, they're whipping through 100 clocks in an hour.

"In order to have production, you have to be well organized to push the product through," says Ricardo Mendez, an assistant supervisor in Storm Smart's factory, when the group broke for a pizza lunch. His co-worker, Susan, a seamstress who helps make Storm Smart's signature product, the Storm Catcher, said the process is teaching the concept of "less wasted time."

Mr. Kagan has taught the program to many other companies, such as a contact lens manufacturer and people who produce the lights on the sides of airplane's emergency slides.

"Manufacturing is manufacturing," Mr. Kagan says. "The principles can be applied anywhere."

During the one-day workshop, the employees learned concepts like a "kaizen" event, a Japanese word "to make better." They learned how to cut down on red tape like shipping, blue prints and order taking. Mr. Kagan or other teachers will come back in the weeks to come to check up on Storm Smart's progress.

"This is culture changing," Mr. Kagan says. "You don't leave this seminar and think about work the same way."