Bourgault Industries Sees 80% Efficiencies and 95% Quality Levels through Skill Development Programs
Bourgault Industries Ltd.
Bourgault Industries Ltd, was founded in 1974 and remains in St. Brieux Saskatchewan, Canada. In 1995, a facility was built in Minot, ND, which established the marketing operation in the United States. The Minot manufacturing venture was started in 2008. Globally, Bourgault Industries Ltd., employs approximately 700 people; 50 of which are employed in the Minot, ND, facility.
Bourgault’s customer base is made up of primarily small grains, oilseed and pulse crop growers with growth into the row crop market. With customers around the world, their main focus is on leading edge seeding and tillage products. Their competitors range from mainline farm equipment manufacturers to local niche market operations around the world.
Their mission is “to design, manufacture and distribute the highest quality, most durable and reliable farm equipment in the world; that is affordable and meets or exceeds the expectation of our most demanding customers.”
Training New Employees, Increasing Safety and Reducing Quality Defects
The established manufacturing operation in the Canadian factory was searching for better ways to train new people. By improving training, the goals were to increase safety and productivity while reducing quality defects.
When the results of the Job Instruction and Job Relation training that was going on in Canada were starting to become apparent, we immediately felt this was the method of training that we would use to train an entire new team of supervisors and line workers in our new Minot facility. Bourgault had 34 years of manufacturing experience in their Canadian facility, and used that experience to design and layout a brand new plant using the latest technology and manufacturing systems. They engaged Impact Dakota to provide training to equip their new team.
Skill Development in Effective Job Training and Skill Development in Leading and Communicating with Others
Impact Dakota suggested starting with Skill Development in Effective Job Training and Skill Development in Leading and Communicating with Others in the new Minot plant. These modules were delivered and implemented almost from day one. Impact Dakota also assisted in testing the training. They worked with employees on the shop floor on their first sets of job instructions.
80% Efficiencies, 95% Quality Levels
When Bourgault engaged Impact Dakota, all of their employees and processes were new. Job Instruction training was used to help define job tasks and to train the team, and Job Relations training was used to meld the team of new people together. This training was key because most of the manufacturing team did not come from a manufacturing background.
The results of the training were evident immediately. New supervisors were learning various processes and then documenting and implementing training for new team members. In a remarkably short period of time, the new people were safely turning out quality work in a controlled system. This has helped the Minot facility ramp up to 80% efficiency within the first year of operation, while maintaining a quality level of greater than 95%.
Ron Allan, US General Manager, says, “The best measure of our success can be described as concept to working factory in less than 12 months. This involved purchasing, installing and tooling up the new equipment. If I had to use a number to measure our success, I would say that we went from 0 to 80 in less than one year. The remaining 20 will come as we continue to use this training in refining our processes.”
“It was equally impressive to see a new team member with no manufacturing experience operating a high tech piece of equipment as it was to see a new supervisor work through a job relations situation with a successful outcome.”
—Ron Allan, US General Manager