MityLite is an industry leader in manufacturing lightweight chairs and tables, but their extensive offerings forced the company to stock over 45 different box sizes.
When Mity‐Lite, Inc. of Orem, Utah undertook an overhaul of its entire operations to improve efficiencies, every method and tool was evaluated against three key operational drivers: quality, delivery, and cost. At Mity‐Lite, quality was leading the industry but improving schedule performance was urgent. The longstanding manufacturer of durable lightweight tables and chairs recognized that implementing a one‐piece work flow was critical to shortening delivery lead times for its business.
To help achieve Mity‐Lite’s primary goal of providing accurate, complete, and on‐time shipments to fully satisfy customers, the company installed an on‐demand packaging system from Packsize LLC to revolutionise the way tables are sent out the door.
Before the inception of the Packsize system, Mity‐Lite’s extensive offering of tables forced the company to stock over 45 different box sizes.
“Planning for packaging needs was a difficult problem,” said Mity‐Lite’s Chief Operations Officer Brian Bowers. “Our corrugated stock inventory took up significant warehouse space and we often found ourselves with too much inventory of slow‐moving boxes and frequent stockouts in other sizes.
“The Packsize system is amazing in its ability to build exactly what is needed when it is needed,” said Bowers.
Selecting from three sizes of corrugate, a Mity‐Lite line operator selects and enters the size and number of boxes needed into the machine’s keypad. The machine cuts the cardboard to size, complete with score lines and a glue tab. The flattened box is delivered onto an outfeed table. Another packaging operator inserts the box into an automated gluer. The Mity‐Lite tables are then inserted into the custom boxes, closed, and staged for shipment.
“With the switch from purchasing and storing finished boxes to building boxes on‐demand with Packsize, we have enjoyed several layers of operational improvement and cost reduction,” explains Bowers. “These are results management could really support.”
The customised boxes for each table product have eliminated generic boxes that sometimes required alterations as well. Moreover, the footprint for the company’s corrugated stock inventory has reduced by 60 percent.
Mity‐Lite’s journey to upgrade its operations has resulted in industry‐best lead times and improvement in each of its key drivers. Bowers maintains, “Certainly the Packsize implementation was an important component in our overall operations strategy, and continues to support our advancements toward one‐piece work flow.”
