Florida MEP Lights Up the Way for SOL
Internationally-Known Solar Lighting Designer and Manufacturer Implements a Series of Lean Trainings, Increases Productivity
Sol, Inc. (Solar Outdoor Lighting), the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of solar LED outdoor lighting solutions, has worked on some pretty big jobs since their inception in 1990. Since 1990, Sol has manufactured over 38,000 systems for dozens of businesses, universities, and gover-nments around the world, including Walt Disney World, the Statue of Liberty, the Pentagon, Miami International Airport, the public works department in Curacao, and the Jamaica Petroleum Company. Their mission is to provide environmentally friendly, attractive lighting systems in both solar-powered and efficient grid-tied LED variants.
Due to the firm’s rapid sales growth, the company decided to look for innovative ways to increase prod ction without sacrificing the quality of their work.
“Having worked with the Florida Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Florida MEP) years ago at
another company, I knew they’d be the perfect organization for us to partner with to improve our business,” said Keith Bloomer, director of production engineering at Sol. “Their Lean methodology training helps us keep pace with the demands of our customers, while increasing our productivity and improving service.”
After Sol’s initial work with the Florida MEP, which involved help with a new factory layout, Sol embarked on a series of trainings. Those included Kaizen trainings in which a series of structured activities enabled a team to achieve rapid, action-oriented improvements in problem areas, and also Time Wise® principles of Lean manufacturing and other Lean implementation events to improve productivity and efficiency. Bloomer says fifteen people in the operations group at Sol were involved in the Time Wise® lean training and continue to use their training to evolve the shop as they move forward.
“Our production lines are implementing the Lean process and we’ve seen an increase in productivity by more than 50 percent,” added Bloomer. “We went from producing 30 fixtures a day to 80 fixtures a day. We are experiencing a growth spurt for our product overseas, as well as a reduction in lead time on our production lines. We will also start to see some profit increases as well.” (continued)