Green is good

With sustainability in mind, West Paw uses organic, recycled and recyclable materials in its sewn and injection-molded products and streamlines its operations. It has reduced its environmental impact with a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient facility that uses Lean manufacturing, the “just in time” production system Toyota created to identify and eliminate waste. Lean manufacturing increases efficiency by optimizing the flow of materials and respecting individuals’ input and talents – a factor evident in the effusive pride of employees and their pets, the company’s official product testers.

Beyond Lean, West Paw realized that it could further increase manufacturing efficiency by going mobile with its FileMaker database solutions. On the production floor, raw materials advance from one station to the next in tote-bins or “kits” for sewing, injection molding or further assembly. For years, inventory managers carried clipboards, jotting down each kit’s contents and the raw materials consumed, tracking everything on paper for subsequent database re-entry. Managers carried bins of work in progress from station to station. When products went into finished goods inventory, customer service representatives sometimes jogged back to the shipping dock to let specialists know that a rush order was ready to go.

But today, iPads equipped with FileMaker Go automate the manufacturing process. As bins go through production, employees scan barcodes at each step using tiny, keyfob-sized Bluetooth scanners attached to their iPads. The FileMaker database, accessed on iPads and hosted in the back office, automatically deducts raw materials from inventory, advances kits to the next stage of production, moves products into finished goods inventory and alerts specialists when products are ready for packing and shipping. Then the production process kicks off again as new orders arrive.