The Challenge

Founded in 1994, RAD Torque Systems is a leading Canadian manufacturer of pneumatic, battery powered, and electronic pistol grip torque wrenches. For 27 years, they have been supplying their trademarked products globally across the aerospace, oil and gas, petrochemical, mining, power generation, and manufacturing industries.

RAD Torque is committed to investing in latest technology to achieve the highest level of innovation, quality, and performance. As a result, they have been experiencing rapid growth through their innovative designs. RAD Torque engaged Propel Solutions to conduct a review of its sales, manufacturing, and supporting processes. The objective of this engagement was to review key processes to determine the best methods for replicating current success to support RAD Torque’s continued growth.

The Objective:

The project was conducted within a two-week period and included the following activities:

  • Defining the Current-State Processes: Propel kicked off the engagement by documenting the current state processes within production, sales, engineering, and procurement to understand the current state operations. Through conducting interviews with area managers, creating detailed process maps, and leading managers and staff through process critique sessions, a baseline for identifying available process improvements was formed.
  • Analyzing Sales Forecast and Production Scheduling: Propel facilitated workshops with the RAD Torque leadership team to understand the tools that are currently used to manage the processes. Using the results of the Management Toolkit Critique, Propel was able to identify tools that could be designed and implemented to maximize resource planning and utilization and increase collaboration between teams.
  • Measuring the Impact of Process Improvements: Propel conducted a comprehensive analysis of financial data from the last 12 months to demonstrate key productivity measures within production, sales, engineering, and procurement. Baseline KPI’s were defined to establish a snapshot of the current state operations. From here, the impact of changing the organizational targets were modelled to help demonstrate the value of improvement efforts.
  • Designing the Future State: Propel identified quick wins that could be immediately implemented by the RAD Torque team. These quick wins allow staff and managers to see the results of their involvement in real time and build momentum for larger-scale process improvements. A roadmap for implementing the changes was developed to support the way forward.

The Results

The rapid lean assessment provided RAD Torque with a roadmap for replicating current success and supporting the organization’s growth trajectory as they prepare for a new building move. Staff engagement throughout the analysis was high, with over 40 opportunities for improvement identified by the RAD Torque team. Through this analysis, opportunities were identified to align the sales forecast and production schedule, improve order fulfilment lead times, and introduce product management programs to reduce inventory costs.