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Manufacturer of Buttons
Background
The firm began operations in 1939, and was incorporated in New York State in
1951. During its early years the firm’s production was almost exclusively wooden
buttons and fasteners. In the latter half of the twentieth century the need for
wooden buttons has become cyclical and unstable. To address this concern, the
firm began, in 1990, to diversify by producing and selling buttons made of
casein (a by-product of sheep’s milk), and buttons made totally of plastic.
While the product itself seems insignificant, the value of the button in terms
of style/fashion and perception of the overall garment makes it a very important
accessory--one which has attracted many competitors to the business. Due to this
competition, the firm’s annual sales declined from $2.1
million to just under $1 million over a three year period.
Assistance Provided
The NYS TAAC completed a review of the operations that
concluded the firm needed to address the issue of productivity if it wished to
remain competitive in its market. Intense competition from imports had
greatly affected the firm in two ways. Primarily, imports of buttons alone, to
be sewed on domestically produced garments have grown. Secondly, many of the
firm's customers
are directly importing garments on which buttons are already sewn.
During the review process it became clear
the firm was handicapped with outdated production equipment and too many manual
operations. The pin shanking operation appeared to be a major bottleneck and
area of concern to the entire operation. (Pin shanking is the part of production
that inserts the pin into the button to produce a finished product.) Thus, the
recovery strategy developed for the firm included a project to automate the pin shanking
operation.
Project Results
The firm and the NYS TAAC selected an external consultant to design and
test a fully-automated system that will sort and orient the pins, sort and
orient the buttons, insert pins into the buttons, insert the pin-button assembly
into a die former, activate the die former, and then eject the finished product
into a bin. The automated system is designed to limit operator activities to
pouring pins and buttons into hoppers, and removing finished buttons from a bin.
The automated system was developed for a cost of less than
$25,000.
The firm now has a production tool that will translate into an increase in sales
of nearly 15 percent for the first full year of production. Employees who in the
past had performed manual operations have been shifted to other areas of the
operations. No layoffs have resulted from this automation. Rather, the increase
in projected sales has caused management to consider additional hires to meet increased demand.
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