Waterfurnace Grows: Kelly Box Adapts

Waterfurnace Grows: Kelly Box Adapts

Waterfurnace international is the worldwide leader in geothermal and water source heating and cooling systems. Kelly Box helps Waterfurnace design and implement packaging for many commercial and residential products they make. Since 2002 Waterfurnace has double their annual sales; leading to opportunities and issues both for Kelly Box and Waterfurnace's packaging needs. Identifying the key packaging products that represent the highest turnover, Kelly Box and Waterfurnace have implemented a new program that uses Kelly Box as an extension of their production floor. Kelly Box receives weekly production forecasts and procedures based on our internal lead times, allowing us to reduce the Waterfurnace footprint in our warehouse. By working with purchasing and production teams at Waterfurnace, we identified exactly how much of each part can be stored on the production floor at Waterfurnace and established the maximum release quantities for those parts. This ensures that Waterfurnace never gets more material than they can stock. Integrating their production forecast into our production plan allows us to ensure they never run out of stock in our plant. The key to this is planning and communication. Our Kelly Box team effectively communicates with each other and with customers to ensure we meet a customer's requirements on the plant floor. We also have developed a set of metrics that helps us measure how the program is working. We evaluate these quarterly and try to find new ways to make the process more effective.