Carlisle stresses lean manufacturing at its Dayco plant

Much like the rubber it manufactures and markets, Springfield's Dayco plant has undergone transformation.

The 43-year-old plant, which covers 22 acres on a 62-acre site at Battlefield Road and Scenic Avenue became an asset of Carlisle Companies Inc. on Aug. 17, 2001, when the company bought it from Mark IV Industries.

The $139 million buy also included production units in Fort Scott, Kan., and Red Wing, Minn., said Jim Chipman, plant manager since July 8. The 650,000 square-foot facility will be renamed Carlisle Power Transmission Products.

A 75,000-square-foot technical center also was part of the sale. Research and development operations are conducted by three entities at the Springfield center: Mark IV for its automotive products, Parker-Hannifin for its hose division and Carlisle for its industrial division, Chipman said.

Parker Hannifin bought Dayco's Fluid Management operations on Oct. 19, 2001. While Parker would not disclose the purchase price, the revenues of Dayco Fluid were $304 million the year before Parker bought them, said Jennifer Eaton, manager of communications for Parker.

Carlisle's decision to purchase Dayco was a result of its strategy to move into similar industries, and it saw Dayco as an opportunity to do that in the power transmission area, said Bill Wroblewski, vice president of operations for Carlisle.

Carlisle, which trades as CSL on the New York Stock Exchange, had $1.8 billion in sales for 2001.

Leaner manufacturing

Chipman's mission is to further integrate a lean manufacturing process into the Springfield plant based on the Toyota production system, he said. This streamlining approach was first launched by on the automotive side of Mark IV's business three years ago, he added.

Using an organizational scheme where activities are grouped together, "lean manufacturing eliminates a lot of waste in the process ... reducing the time people spend in each process," Chipman said.

The benefits of this approach for the Springfield plant would be reducing waste, while increasing output, profitability and employee satisfaction, Chipman said. "The key is now to be able to shorten lead time" and deliver a "quality product," he added.

The main hurdle he saw was in "communication and getting people to buy into the aspect of change," he added.

Behind closed doors

From start to finish, Dayco Carlisle's processing and belt-building divisions are all about rubber. Employing proprietary methods of manufacture and utilizing numerous in-house patents, a 450-person production staff works three shifts mixing a special blend of polymers, waxes, oils and chemicals to create belts ranging from 19 to 900 inches in length, Chipman said.

Making "a belt is almost like cooking a vegetable. The rubber compounds are in, what we call an uncured state,'" Chipman said. After the mixture reaches a certain stage, it is set to "a specific gauge or width and then we laminate them around a drum" according to belt size, he added.

"When we build the product we put them in a pressure vessel that, with pressure and heat, we form the belt and cure the belt to its hard form, its finished form," Chipman said.

The plant makes belts for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as original parts. It makes service belts for OEMs that then sell them to their customers in their own service business, and it makes after-market belts as a Dayco brand for companies that don't have their own service operations, Chipman said.

Chipman

Beginning with Dayco in Springfield in 1969, Chipman has spent more than 30 years in various positions with Mark IV and Dayco. He oversees eight different managers, but prefers to spend a good deal of time on the floor.

It was Chipman's experience that won him his new slot. "We were looking for an experienced plant manager to manage this facility, and he certainly had the credentials and had the desire," Wroblewski said.

Chipman would not disclose annual revenues for the plant.