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10 | /insight on manufacturing • March 2014 w w w.in s i g h t o n m f g . c o m other customers' products, so all of the upfront planning goes into making sure you can move and not disrupt your customers," Kettler says. All of the company's moving plans centered around a two- to three-week buffer of product shipments. The company planned for being down three days during weekend moves, but the extra wiggle room was included in case anything went awry, Kettler says. "We had to go sell this to our customers," Kettler says. "They were very nervous about a move of this scale and size, and three facilities. But we had done so much preplanning." Plexus armed itself with information such as demand, consumption rate, fixed manufacturing lead time and engineering time. It developed a "FMEA," or failure modes and effects analysis, noting possible risks that could occur from the time equipment was shut down to when it was put on a truck and moved to the new facility. "It allowed us to very seamlessly plan," Kettler says. "And why it took us five months to move is we didn't shut down an entire building and pick it up and move it." Instead, the company moved its operations by sector, or department. Making communication with the customers a priority helped facilitate the move. "I think anytime that you're moving from one facility to the other, there's an element of risk – 'What if you drop my products? What if you get into the new facility and there's no power? What if, what if, what if?'" Kettler says. "This is where having those conversations early with the customer to ease their concerns over time, and making them part of the process, was key." One customer, for example, needed a six-month safety net of products rather than the two to three weeks Plexus had planned, Kettler says. Another customer received an urgent order and needed its entire stockpile of products shipped immediately – the day before Plexus's first move. "But, again, because of our planning, that Monday we were building product and we had our first shipments back to them that Wednesday," Kettler says. "Literally, three days later we were shipping product again, even though they had consumed in one fell swoop two weeks of build-ahead." Tripling size G reen Bay-based Cherney Microbiological Services, which expanded its facility from 8,000 square feet to nearly 25,000 square feet over a 14-month period completed in 2011, faced similar concerns from its client base, says Debbie Cherney, president and director of microbiology. "There were a number of clients who were involved and asked about how we were maintaining the integrity of the work we were doing," Cherney says. "All of them were very satisfied with the efforts that we had in place to just continue to maintain that sample integrity." That kind of communication Moving minus the madness c o n t i n u e d ompanies that have been through the process of consolidation or expansion know that the more you have planned out ahead of time, the less likely you are to run into problems along the way. Here are some tips based on steps other companies took before they made the big move: » Choose a general contractor that understands your industry. "The general contractor that we used had built some labs in the past," says Ryan Bobholz, quality manager for continuous improvement for Cherney Microbiological. "They came in and spent a full day onsite seeing what we had, how we did things. They stayed very involved with regular meetings throughout the project." » Determine the areas of potential risk, such as delays in product delivery or sensitivity of equipment. » Talk to your customers about those risks and how you plan to avoid or assuage them. » Talk to your employees about your plans and have a system for regular updates and access to information. Offer opportunities for input whenever possible. » Develop a detailed plan for the moving process. "You need to have a schedule that addresses every step of your process, and it has to fit to a timeline," says Debbie Cherney, president and director of microbiology for Cherney Microbiological. "It has to be a buttoned-down process from beginning to end. It's like building a house – there are steps in the process and a good contractor keeps the flow going for that timeline." » Do a test run, if necessary. Plexus worked with its rigging company to move a manufacturing line from one old facility to another to ensure that everything would work when they moved the line permanently, says Scott Kettler, general manager of Plexus Fox Cities. "We tested all of this to take the risk out of it to make sure that we were very confident we were going to be able to move." » Acclimate employees to the new space. Offer tours of the new facility. – Nikki Kallio Before you move Cherney Microbiological in Green Bay more than tripled the size of its facility in 2011. c o u r t e s y c h e r n e y M i c r o b i o l o g i c a l