Success Story

Viper Northwest

Industry

Machines and Machine Parts

Location

Albany, Oregon

Date Founded

1985

Number of Employees

150+

Background

Viper Northwest, Inc., established in 1985, is a highly responsive build-to-print job shop, making precision fabricated and machined parts and assemblies. Currently, Viper Northwest employs over 150 people and occupies 110,000 sq. ft. over five buildings. Their mission is to deliver the right product on time, every time.

$500,000

Cost Savings

$17,000

New Sales

Engaged

Operators
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The Situation

Viper Northwest has always been a company with a focus on cutting-edge machining technology and employing people that bring world-class technical expertise and customer service to the table.  As they have grown organically over the years, Viper’s overall operational system was struggling to bring all these talents together in a way that delivered the capacity and lead times needed to satisfy their growing customer demand.

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The Solution

Over the course of four years, Viper Northwest partnered with OMEP consultants in a wide variety of areas including operational strategy, lean manufacturing techniques, scheduling, as well as leadership development and recruiting.  It wasn’t any 1 project or engagement that made the difference for Viper Northwest, but a combination of working with OMEP and their own unrelenting tendency towards experimentation and organizational learning has allowed them to flourish and grow.

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The Results

Together with OMEP, Viper Northwest was able to accomplish a number of great changes to their organization over the last four years. Ultimately, they succeeded in establishing a machining operation capable of improved machine uptime, capability, and capacities. This was accomplished through a variety of work including creative scheduling, programming, tool management, and sequencing. Viper Northwest now enjoys not only the benefits of improved operations, but also engaged operators, and increased capacity. They have also created shop visuals and a machine tool maintenance (TPM) program.


Learn about OMEP’s process!

HOW WE WORK

 

OMEP has assisted us with many projects and has consistently provided us with a different perspective to consider our problems. It is easy to get drawn in to the day to day challenges in the business, but OMEP helped us rise above that and work on the business.

Kevin Davies

Chief Executive Officer