Job Instruction Training Enables Company to Decrease Set-Up Time by 75% and Employee Mistakes by 50%
Bordertown Retail Systems
Bordertown Retail Systems (Bordertown) is a family owned company, established in 1990, with headquarters and manufacturing located in Neche, North Dakota. It also maintains a showroom and sales office in Burnsville, Minnesota.
They build and sell customized and standard displays, holders and storage racks to a wide variety of manufacturers engaged in setting up retail displays to sell their products within retail and wholesale settings.
Bordertown’s customer mission “Is to design and build displays that successfully market your product in today’s competitive retail environment, increase your brand recognition and build customer loyalty.” See bordertownwire.com for more information.
High Number of Employee Mistakes and Set-Up Times
Given the wide variety of retail solutions Bordertown makes, they wanted to have a more effective approach in place to train temporary as well as existing employees on how best to build product. They also wanted to get the best way; to do a job accurately documented in order to better support cross-training of employees and expand on their company’s commitment to continuous improvement.
Skill Development in Effective Job Training
With the assistance of Terry Cox, Senior Business Advisor with Impact Dakota, Bordertown trained their staff in Skill Development in Effective Job Training in two hour sessions over five days. Additional time was allocated for Terry to work one on one with Bordertown staff on breaking down jobs, taking digital photos of the major steps of each job and assembling them into a book located at each work cell.
Since many of the processes may not repeat often, these work instruction books make a very good reference for a Bordertown staff person who has not done that specific job for some time.
Decreases in Set-Up Times by 75% and Employee Mistakes by 50%
Bordertown staff decreased the set-up time required for jobs by 75% and also decreased employee mistakes by 50%. It also re-kindled a continuous improvement mindset. It helped Bordertown achieve the cross training needed to support greater staff flexibility and in supporting increased output.