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Bead Chain Launches New Website, Increases Traffic by 20% – Bead Chain, a division of Bead Industries, launched a ne… http://ow.ly/1jQCBQ
My best friend gave me what turned out to be my favorite business book: Good to Great by Jim Collins. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Good to Great was published in 2001 and, according to Nielsen BookScan, is still on the Wall Street Journal list of Best-Selling Hardcover Business books at number 12.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
There are many profound revelations in the book, but there was one passing comment that gave me the freedom to move our company forward. To paraphrase in my world, “Just because it says The Bead Chain Manufacturing Company over the front door doesn’t necessarily mean you have to manufacture Bead Chain®.” What? That floored me. I thought that was the way it was always supposed to be.
Not so. And that was the beginning of our thinking outside the box. We’d been making Bead Chain® for over eighty-five years. A lot of effort went into maintaining noisy and oily machinery, moving heavy product throughout the factory and keeping up with labor intensive plating. Chain is a commodity made worldwide, while our electronic connector business is a niche market with great future potential. When I realized we could consolidate our chain production with our joint venture in the UK, and subsequently to our South Korean partners, I knew we could maintain our quality standards there and our exceptional customer service here. But we could also concentrate on our core competency – electronic connectors.
A name is very important, but not nearly as important as the quality of the company’s products.
Bead Industries, formerly the Bead Chain Manufacturing Co., was housed in a typical four-story factory building, a two-story plating shop, and a large, unattached warehouse – nearly 64,000 square feet. For many years, Bead was pretty self-sufficient: we did our own slitting and plating. There was plenty of room to store obsolete equipment, broken tooling and an abundance of inventory. Each floor or department had its own culture (and Christmas tree during the holidays). We employed several “material handlers” just to move raw materials around within the factory – from the warehouse to the basement slitter and up to the first and second floors, and then down the service elevator from production to degreasing and plating and on to packing and shipping.
As a member of the Metal Manufacturing Education and Training Alliance (METAL), we took part of a lean program in April 2001, conducted by Ken Branco of R.E.V.V. International. When Mr. Branco walked us through our entire process from taking an order through to shipment, it took up almost thirty feet of butcher paper and a plethora of Post-it notes. We were astounded by the number of unnecessary and redundant steps in our process.
Our lean experience started with streamlining several departments. The culture was resistant at first, but those in the “leaned” departments immediately realized the benefits. Next, we re-evaluated our other locations. We owned a joint venture in the U.K. that also produced bead chain. Why manufacture in two locations when we can operate one with the best practices of both? We later sold that joint venture in the U.K. and streamlined our processes further. Without chain, plating was no longer feasible as the department was not fully utilized, so we outsourced to several competent platers in the tri-state area. In addition, new technologies in slitting had perfected traverse winding of metal strip much better suited to our production. We cut two more departments we didn’t need.
The Lean Process Pyramid
Within two years, we relocated to a single-story building in Milford – one-third the size of the factory in Bridgeport, and we are now concentrating on our electronics line of interconnect pins. Without the noise and distraction of bead chain production, we are now concentrating on our core business, the electronics line of interconnect pins and connectors, while still supplying chain to our loyal customers. That focus has produced results we’ve not seen many years.
When we started down the lean path, I had no idea the final results would change the face of the company so dramatically…and it ultimately saved us.
When Mr. Branco walked us through our entire process from taking an order to shipment, it took up almost thirty feet of butcher paper and a plethora of Post-it notes. We were astounded by the number of unnecessary and redundant steps in our process.
Bead Industries has demonstrated its Quality Management System to be compliant to ISO 9001: 2008 quality standards. ISO 9001:2008 is the fourth and latest edition of the ISO standard first published in 1987, which has become the international benchmark for providing high quality products and maintaining excellent customer satisfaction.
Ken Bryant, CEO of Bead Industries, commented: “We are delighted to attain this updated certification, and its recognition of our commitment to quality and to continuous improvement. Our success in achieving this goal is due to the tremendous dedication and teamwork of our employees.”
Click here to read the full press release.
The Family Jewels Are Nickel-Plated Steel 
