Released in: MANUFACTURINGTODaY
CASCO drives it home with lean practices
President Ali El-Haj says Casco develops all of its action plans around value, quality, service and safety.
Established in 1921 in Bridgeport, Conn., Casco Products Corp. initially produced a wide range of products, from household items to military and automotive goods. Through these operations, the company says, it invented the modern car cigarette lighter in 1925. In 1985, Casco divested all non-automotive products and decided to focus on the carlighter market. Today, automotive products represent approximately 95 percent of the business. Between1989 and 2004, the company grew from a single U.S.-based facility with four primary domestic customers to 10 facilities worldwide, supplying products to nearly every OEM.
The company has two product lines: electro-mechanical and electronic and sensor products. Electromechanical products include lighters and power outlets and the electronic and sensor division produces ambient temperature, sun load/solar, air quality, relative humidity and distance sensor products.
The company has also developed a DC/AC inverter as well as a stepper motor that will be launched in the coming months. President Ali El-Haj joined Casco in 1989 as an engineering manager to assist in the company's product diversification. He became executive vice president and European general manager in 1998 and assumed the responsibility of president and general manager in 2002.
According to El-Haj, Casco is the "undisputed world leader in market share as well as technology" in the lighter and power outlet market as well as sun load
sensors.
"I believe that Casco's worldwide operations and presence is unique and the fact that we have adapted this, as well as our lean systems, to be the tools for perfecting the four pillars of the company is what sets us apart," he says. "We develop all of our action plans around the four pillars – value, quality, service and safety. Our mission statement clearly sets the tone. We rely on our company culture, and not the management hierarchy, to get things done. We are a lean and a service-oriented company." To stay on top of the market, the company is proactive in all areas, El-Haj explains, "We are not waiting for things to happen." and then react," he asserts. "When the steel pricing went through the roof, we knew that we could survive this by assuring that our waste is eliminated and our designs are optimized, as well as protecting our suppliers and customers. We know that we need to support our customers where they are, and that is why we positioned our operations geographically as we did, to be close."
El-Haj says Casco plans to concentrate on lean manufacturing and become the "world leader in the lean system." Some of the company's operations are currently being benchmarked for lean, he says. All of the company's facilities are certified for TS16949, ISO 14001, and three are Ford Q1 certified. As he explains, the company's manufacturing processes are tailored to the strengths of its various global locations. For example, in North America and Europe, it has high-speed and highvolume automated and semi-automated systems, El-Haj notes. In North Africa, South America and China, it uses manual and semi-automated assembly processes. "In general, we take components – deep-drawn and stamped steel components, plastic injection-molded components and ceramics – and assemble them into finished products [that include] lighters, power-outlets [and] electronic sensors," El-Haj says. "We then test, package and ship these products to the worldwide automotive industry."
Many of Casco's suppliers are small- to moderate-sized companies. This allows it to have a close working relationship with the purchasing, quality and manufacturing functions of its suppliers, he says. "Additionally, these smaller companies can be more responsive to Casco's special needs, and are open to using and implementing lean manufacturing systems and Six Sigma problem-analysis tools." Casco has been implementing visual control of inventory through the use of finished goods super-markets. "This is a pull system, where customer demand depletes our finished goods supermarkets, and the equipment operators restock or refill the supermarket on an as-needed basis," El-Haj explains. "We also use historical data to set the restocking levels and amounts. Where we cannot use a visual system,we employ product kanbans, or replenishment notification systems."
Casco says its lean systems do not apply only to manufacturing, but to product development as well as all other aspects of business. In 2003, Casco began production of its first sun sensor product in Frankfurt, Germany. Today, the Casco sun sensor product line consists of three product families with more than 10 individual products.
"Casco, now world leader in sun sensor production, has been able to achieve such rapid growth in an already established market by focusing on the often intangible customer needs, and quickly bringing the appropriate product solutions to market," El-Haj emphasizes. "Understanding customer needs and transferring these needs to engineering requirements -- often the most difficult step within the new product development cycle -- has been simplified at Casco by the design for Six Sigma process and the use of tools to optimize the product and create the best value for our customers. It's critical and important that we go beyond the product specifications and try to capture the other undefined needs."