Case #2,
: back to the early 1980s, established by three entrepreneurs,
Abbott, Guidry, and Scott. They recognized an opportunity in the water purification equipment industry
and created a niche manufacturing company producing high quality brass valves. With Steve Abbott's
business sense, John Scott's established rpnlttot:~-' .. manufacturing industry, and Roland Guidry's
administrative expertise; the founders 0 )ducts quickly grew their company into the
leading water purification supplier. They cllversified their product line quickly adapting the
manufacturing- skills utilized in brass valve production and began producing brass pumps and flow
controllers. sement saw it imperative to innovate and capture market share in the
manufacturllle; Vl VVa<", p~' , ..__timl components; so they invested in an engineering department tasked
with research and development of new products.
The company assembled the new components in their modern manufacturing facility using the
same equipment and labor for all three product lines. They adopted a just-in-time delivery system,
processing, packaging and shipping products upon completion. Just-in-time (JIT) production, which is
also called lean production, is a "demand-pull' manufacturing system that manufactures each component
in a production line as soon as, and only when, needed by the next step in the production linel
• In this
manufacturing process, the close coordination of the work stations ease the flow of production by
reducing inventory and wastage, decreasing set-up time, and meeting customer demand without inflating
overhead costs.
The increased competition in the industry has driven down prices forcing'
reconsider their traditional accounting system. Will a comp ...