Diversity, Teamwork, and Innovation are Adding More Value
By Darren Siekman - VP Sales & Marketing of Behlen Country
The Behlen Country team has been busy the past year launching new products and implementing best practices across our three plants. The goal of value added customer satisfaction is the driver and the reason for both of these initiatives.
New product innovation is being driven by a cross functional New Product Team consisting of manufacturing, sales, engineering, and purchasing. The focus has been to highlight and design "dramatic differences" into Behlen Country products. One of the best examples of this has been the Landowner Gate.
This simple barrier gate is perfect for absentee landowners, rural driveways, and public areas that need to restrict motor traffic. When our team designed this gate, there were several features that were appealing to both dealers and end users:
•Telescoping design allows the Behlen Country dealer to carry just "one size"
•Flexibility during installation as end users can custom drill the length to fit their driveway
•Safety and security are permeated the design of the gate with collared hinges that are nonremovable to prevent tampering, reflective tape on the tubing which is clearly visible for ATVs and other recreational vehicles, and the ability to be easily chained and be padlocked into place
It is gratifying to hear large customers say things like, "I wish I would have thought of this," and "why did it take you so long to come up with this."
Additional innovations which resulted from the New Product Team's work include a new high efficiency bale feeder that is being promoted and a heavy duty gate and corral panel for the west.
The team has found that our diverse backgrounds and vocations have helped design products that are not only useful for the customer, but also flow through the shop floor faster and more efficiently than previous designs. The group has also experienced that it is a lot easier to solve problems as a team as opposed to going off by ourselves and attempting to come up with a solution - which leads us to our next value added improvement of implementing best practices as the branch plants.
Our three plants operate in Tennessee, Nebraska, and Oregon. Over the past 10 years, we have had a lot of successes and improvements in processes. With the current challenging economy, it became imperative that we took the "best of the best" and implemented the systems that worked the highest efficiency.
For instance, Baker City had loaded trucks in a different manner than Huntingdon and Columbus. In this situation, there was no "right" or "wrong", but it was apparent that Baker City was able to load trucks quicker than our other two plants. Once again, we got a diverse team of Partners in Progress (employees) from all three plants together to study the "tricks of the trucks" that allowed the Baker City plant to be so successful. The result - by implementing the loading improvements of our collaboration, our loading time decreased by more than 40 percent! This means our customers receive their loads faster while costing Behlen less "non-value added" time during the loading process.
By keeping an open mind, our cross functional team was able to shift their focus and even surprise themselves at their tremendous results. This is the kind of diverse experience that keeps Behlen Country as the leading manufacturer of Farm and Ranch equipment in the United States.