Resource Guide

Washington Manufacturing Service
Marty Lyons – Brace Point Railings

Thanks to an assist from Washington Management Service, "throughputs" jumped by 300% for some of the product line at Brace Point Railings. The company specializes in all manner of railings, whether for highrises with mountain views or houseboats at sea level. The need for a big productivity jump wasn’t an option – it was a requirement. "The pressure on manufacturing is a constant. It always has been. You’ve got to be better, smarter, and faster," says Brace Point’s company president, Marty Lyons.

Brace Point was competing with several other firms who had the coveted ISO certification, a byword for manufacturing quality. When Lyons saw competition breathing down his neck, he got ahold of Washington Manufacturing Service (WMS).

WMS is a nonprofit partnership between the State of Washington and industry with a mission to make Washington businesses more competitive. WMS worked with South Seattle Community College to help bring ISO standardization and production efficiencies to Brace Point Railings. The venture paid off with more than just productivity gains. Quality and customer satisfaction are up too.

Lyons knew training was the critical path Brace Point had to follow, and WMS helped deliver on the goal. Or to put it the way W. Edwards Deming did: "It is not necessary to change – survival is not mandatory."

King County IMEX
Suzanne Tilley – MacMillan-Piper

Someone’s trash is another person’s treasure. That’s the idea behind the Industrial Materials Exchange of King County, or IMEX.

IMEX provides a directory of equipment and materials that businesses are trying to get – or get rid of. From arc lights to zinc oxide, IMEX reads like an industrial Little Nickle.

For Suzanne Tilley, the facilities manager at Macmillan-Piper, a transloading company in south Seattle, the treasure hunt was for fiberboard drum barrels big enough to hold spent fluorescent tubes. Rather than buying barrels brand new on the retail market – if they could even be found – Tilly opened up the IMEX catalog and picked them up for nothing. "We ended up picking them up from a company trying to get rid of theirs," she says.

And Tilley uses IMEX to get rid of things as well as get them. She used IMEX to list a load of leftover cornmeal instead of throwing it away. "Any garbage fee around here is pretty expensive," she says of the Duwamish area that’s home to several of MacMillan-Piper’s facilities. "We have five facilities so we have a lot of dumpsters. IMEX is great in terms of getting things you need cheaply or for free, and get ridding of your surplus. It saves everybody money and reduces the load on the landfill."

Seattle City Light • Energy Smart Service
Marty Houck – Seafreeze

If you could save your business $75,000 annually on a one-time $150,000 investment, you’d do it, right? How about if you only had to pay 40% of that initial investment? That’s exactly what Seafreeze Cold Storage was able to do through a Seattle City Light program called Energy Smart Services.

Staff from Energy Smart contributed free expertise – and some funding – to help Seafreeze install energy-efficient equipment.

The facility manager at Seafreeze, Marty Houck, was challenged to find a way to reduce electrical consumption at a company needing to cool 7.5 million cubic feet of cold storage to far below freezing. He met the challenge with the help of engineers from the Energy Smart Services who knew what to do to pare down the kilowatts. "They’re professional engineers and they know the different technologies, so they’re fluent in what’s going on," Houck says. "They pretty much knew our business before they came in the door."

Small Business Administration
Megan Haas – Utilikilts Testimonial

A few years ago, two entrepreneurs set out to expand their business making kilts for men. They couldn’t find a bank that would bite on the idea. So they sought help through the federal Small Business Administration, which helped them find a lender.

The rest was soon history. To date, Utilikilts has sold 20,000 skirts and the company is a media darling, gaining coverage from CNN, NBC, the New York Times and from news organizations as far away as New Zealand and, of course, Scotland.

And part of the thanks goes to the brave hearts at the SBA, who believed in the dream. "The SBA was like a benevolent rich uncle that was willing to give us a shot," said Megan Haas, who founded the Utilikilts company with Steve Villegas.

Envirostars
Alan Casebeer – Young Corporation

Alan Casebeer believes that good environmentalism can be good for business. Recycling and reuse can reduce costs while a good environmental reputation appeals to customers. In 1998, Casebeer found a program called King County Envirostars that helped him turn his beliefs into reality for his employer, the Young Corporation, a 105-year-old manufacturing business in south Seattle.

Staff from Envirostars helped Young Corporation save money by reducing waste, and its award program then helped to identify the business for its good environmental stewardship. On a star scale of 1 to 5, Young Corporation has received the best possible "5" stars since 1998, and is the first heavy manufacturing company to earn such a high rating from the program.

Casebeer didn’t see an environmental philosophy as being optional in today’s business climate. "We subscribe to the philosophy that we are good environmental stewards. It’s something that’s becoming more and more important – to let customers know that we care about the environment."

Water Smart
Jim Anderson & Todd Shipyards

Todd Pacific Shipyards uses lots of water for lots of things – like washing down its drydock and cleaning ship hulls. Using fresh water from the city cost a small fortune for these and other uses, so Todd worked with the Water Smart Technology Program at Seattle Public Utilities and the company was able to develop systems that pumped in salt water to replace the fresh water it had been using.

Todd facility manager Jim Anderson estimates the change cuts Todd’s water bill in half. "We spend $10,000 a month now for water. If we didn’t have this program, it could easily be double that."

WSDOT Road Conditions Web Site
Peter Whitehead – Nelson Trucking

Operating expenses pile up when an oversize truckload sits stuck in traffic, so dispatchers at Nelson Trucking check traffic conditions continually via the Washington State Department of Transportation Puget Sound Traffic web site. The site provides an instant visual status report on major roadway traffic conditions, mountain pass reports, ferry times, and emergency road closures. That way, Nelson’s 60-plus truck fleet can avoid quagmires from the mountains to the Sound. "We’ve been using it for years," says Peter Whitehead, Nelson Trucking President. "It’s an invaluable tool."