Alexandria, Minnesota – www.alexandriaindustries.com
Alexandria Industries (formerly Alexandria Extrusion Company), is a high quality, short lead-time producer of engineered products. The privately owned company, with nearly 600 employees, delivers customized aluminum extrusions, precision machining of ferrous and non-ferrous products, heatsinks, plastic injection and foam molding components, high-level assemblies and welding, that meet customers’ exact specifications. A single call to any of the Alexandria Industries companies provides access to the collective scope of services and products, simplifying supply chain management. Headquartered in Alexandria, Minn., Alexandria Industries has manufacturing locations in Minnesota, Indiana and Texas.
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QRM Background
In 2002, Tom Schabel, CEO and owner of Alexandria Industries, attended a QRM seminar and decided to implement QRM as the company’s competitive strategy. Starting with office operations, the company has implemented QRM in many other areas of its business.
Results
For the company:
- Inventory/WIP reductions
- Increased floor space utilization
- Ability to target previously unreachable markets/customers
- Increased office capacity
- Reduced internal management cost: scheduling – material handling- inventory control
- Strategically spec’ed equipment and cells to combine operations, which resulted in reduced up/downstream operations (washing – packaging – sawing – additional machining), ability for machine operator to combine operations and substantial lead time reductions
For Alexandria Industries’ customers:
- Reduced quoted lead times from 30 days to 4 days
- Reduced average quote to acknowledgment throughput time from 12 days to 3-5 days
- Reduced extrusion only customers lead time from 6 weeks to 5 days. This resulted in no additional inventory for one of AEC customers.
- Reduced average value-added throughput time from 35 days to 18 days
- 25-45 percent reduction in minimum batch sizes
- Changed stocking programs for several customers – reduced inventory liabilities
Implications
- Alexandria Industries has not lost any work from current customers to competitors.
- Alexandria Industries has been able to gain a foothold in markets that value short lead times.
Conclusions
Customers choose Alexandria Industries because of short, consistent lead times. Alexandria Extrusion does not have to compete solely on price. It has established the ability to stay competitive and even grow during the recent economic downturn.
Customer Comments
“You are the only supplier that we have where it is apparent that response time is embedded into the company culture.”
“The way your people respond just confirms that we made the right decision selecting Alexandria Industries to be our supplier.”
“Alexandria Industries is a low maintenance supplier.”
“We choose you because of your QRM philosophy.”
“There is no other extrusion supplier in the United States with your great system in place.”
“When my Alexandria Industries’ contact is on vacation, I don’t even know it. I can’t say that about my other suppliers.”
Award
Alexandria Extrusion’s first Q-ROC has won four ‘Supplier of the Year awards’ from major customers.