Seymour, Connecticut
205 Employees 

Company Profile
For more than 25 years, Microboard Processing Inc., has established a presence as one of the leading electronics manufacturing services (EMS) in New England. Having evolved from a small repair services firm, MPI is now recognized as one of the premier providers for EMS solutions, and is currently one of the largest circuit board manufacturers in the Northeast. As a Tier 2 contract manufacturer, MPI provides a variety of turnkey solutions to the United States defense, medical, industrial and alternative energy industries with services ranging from quick-turn prototype services to high-volume, virtual manufacturing solutions. MPI clients range from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies across the nation, with an emphasis on the Northeast region.

Throughout the company's history, MPI has been committed to investing in human and plant resources to add capabilities for product development, mechanical, electrical and software design assistance, as well as in-circuit, functional, environmental, agency-compliant and analytical testing.

Situation
MPI achieved ISO 9002 certification in 1994 and has since maintained compliance as an ISO-registered global EMS provider. Ted Labowski, Vice President of Quality at MPI, made the strategic business decision to expand the company's commitment to quality services beyond their already established quality system. He recognized the benefits of becoming registered to ISO 13485, a quality management standard for medical devices, and aimed to achieve certification within a six month time period. However, the time consuming nature of the work was identified as a primary obstacle to becoming registered in such a short amount of time.

The MPI management team also expressed the importance of becoming registered to AS9100, a quality standard for the aerospace industry; these efforts were scheduled to follow the ISO 13485 certification. To reach the company's goal of certification and compliance to both standards, MPI would need to prepare all documentation materials and policy manuals to determine compliance. To facilitate this process, Ted reached out to Ray Snyder, CONNSTEP's Quality Systems Specialist, who put him in contact with CONNSTEP service providers that demonstrated expertise in medical device and aerospace quality assurance.

Beyond the certification process, MPI realized the benefits of pursuing additional continuous improvement efforts in Lean and sent two staff members to CONNSTEP's thirteen week Continuous Improvement Champion Certification (CICC) course under the mentorship of Lean Specialist, Matin Karbassioon.

Microboard Processing, Inc. Client Profile (.pdf)

Solution
Ted and the MPI management team met with Ray Snyder to discuss the requirements and tasks involved with becoming certified to ISO 13845. Under the direction of CONNSTEP's management, Joe Azary was contracted as a service provider to act as a mentor for MPI and provide assistance throughout the certification process. Mr. Azary initially performed a documentation review and on-site Gap Assessment to determine the degree of MPI's compliance to the ISO 13945 standard.

Since MPI had a history of compliance to ISO 9001 and demonstrated a foundation of Lean Awareness, reviewing the company's quality system turned out to be a seamless process. The service provider was responsible for writing the ISO 13485 documentation and assisting MPI's personnel in the implementation process. The management team was trained in an on-site overview on the changes that accompanied the new quality standard, and benefited greatly from the medical device expertise that Mr. Azary brought to the process.

Results
Following the consulting and training period, MPI passed the ISO 13485 registration on the first attempt, and became newly certified to the quality standard in February of 2008. Just three months later, MPI decided to pursue AS9100 certification and again contacted Ray Snyder to request CONNSTEP's assistance. Ray connected the company with service provider Vinay Shrikhande to begin the process of becoming registered to AS9100 within a six month timeframe. The company was able to leverage the service provider's aerospace expertise, as he assisted by writing MPI's AS9100 documentation and incorporated ISO9001:2000 and ISO13485 portions into the Quality Manual. After training management and personnel on the new quality standard, MPI implemented Mr. Shikhande's recommended changes and successfully passed the registration.

The company's achievements in quality paved the way for MPI to focus future efforts on implementing the principles and practices of Lean as a companywide initiative. In the summer of 2009, MPI management sent Andrew Mace and Jason Whittington to CONNSTEP's thirteen week CICC program to develop the skills to apply Lean processes in and beyond the shop floor. They chose to focus their CICC project on streamlining the incoming process to allow raw materials to be delivered to the floor more quickly.

They realized that to accomplish their goal, they would need to employ a 5S system and utilize visual management tools to standardize the factory floor layout and increase available floor space, with the objective to reduce WIP Locations, as well as processing and traveling time. As the CONNSTEP on-site mentor, Matin Karbassioon assisted with efforts to streamline processes through use of value steam mapping, a future state spaghetti diagram, and other Lean tools to develop a continuous flow operation. The project goal was to free up 600 square feet of manufacturing floor space to reduce product travel distance in half and reduce lead time by 25%.

As a result of their work in becoming certified to AS9100 and ISO13485 quality standards, Ted Labowski and the MPI management team immediately recognized the benefits of working with CONNSTEP. They were able to utilize the aerospace and medical expertise of CONNSTEP's service providers to successfully past the quality standard registrations, which provided a cost-effective alternative to hiring a quality engineer at Microboard Processing, Inc.

Accomplishments made through the CICC course project were similarly impressive, with great gains reported in a short period of time. Andrew, Jason and their project team met or exceeded their project goals in every metric they recorded. The project team exceeded their goal of increasing 1,500 square feet of floor space and expanded available shop floor space to 2,778 square feet. They successfully reduced WIP locations from 22 to 8 and reduced lead time by an entire week, from 17 to 10 days. As a result of implementing Lean tools, the project team was also able to decrease distance traveled from more than 3,000 feet to 994 feet. Over the past year, MPI company sales have more than doubled, and currently exceed $70 million.