By: Kylee Treankler
Over the last year and a half, Bay Tek has been on a journey to get our production facility running more efficiently. Our single production line just wasn’t cutting it anymore with the growth that our business has seen in the last couple of years. With some very smart people, and some patience, okay lots of patience, we completely turned the shop floor on its head. We went from one main production line that had all of our products traveling down three value streams.  Each of these value streams specialize in certain products to help gain efficiencies in each value stream to increase output.
Production went from producing about 17-18 games a day, to about 21, just in our facility! We have also outsourced some of our products to our village of companies to allow us to run like the well-oiled machine we need to be and create more capacity for us to build more games.
These value streams also allow our people to flex where we may need it most. Say staffing is an issue one week; we can pull employees from different parts of the shop, to allow lines to continue to move, without shutting down completely. Being flexible is key! Not everything will work perfectly right away, but keep working at it and success will come.
Along with our shop structure changing, our scheduling structure needed to change as well. We went from scheduling one line, to 3-4 lines that work in tandem with customer orders. Using three or more value streams can cause some headaches. There are that many more spots in the schedule that need to move should a store opening push back, or a customer just isn’t ready for the product yet.  Providing ample amount of time, about three weeks, allows us to react much more efficiently, to provide the best service we can!
Customer satisfaction is at the forefront of our business! We changed the way we do business to uphold the standards that our customers expect from us.
Change is all part of the business. If your business practices don’t continue to change, you may get lost in the past.