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Boosting production at Boose: the cross pollination of ideas between two different plants has turned the Boose companies into a jobbing juggernaut.

Article Excerpt
The shift is nearing its end at Boose at Cornwall (BAC), Lebanon, Pa., but instead of winding down, a buzz has been struck up. It's not the standard buzz of induction furnaces, automatic molding lines, conveyer-driven finishing cells and oscillating shakeout that you'd hear every day in a high-production facility such as this one. It's the buzz that comes from a common question and answer floating through a crowd.

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"Are you ready for the meeting?"

"Yeah, you?"

The Boose brass has arrived at the facility, and the floor workers are shutting down their machines and preparing to gather at the northwest end of the plant, near the entrance, which leads to the administrative offices. Few in the building know what to expect. They'll be attending the annual incentives meeting, but the year before, the plant was Cornwall Aluminum Foundry and owned by a different individual, making this the plant's first annual incentives meeting.

The meeting is a cross-pollination from the programs already in place at Boose Aluminum Foundry Co. Inc., Reamstown, Pa., where the Boose management team has long been running a different business, but with a similar management style. The incentives meetings are scheduled in order to distribute company-wide awards for achievement in safety, cost-saving and inventory control.

Now that the Boose group has come into ownership of BAC, many such strategies have been shared between the two plants, and the family's assets now comprise a job shop with a kick--an ability to compete on high-production parts.

"A lot of things are going on between the plants, being able to bring staff over here, being able to throw a casting in there," said Don Varner, Boose Muminum's director of manufacturing. "It gives us an opportunity for continuous improvement."

Over the past several years, opportunities for continuous improvement have been in...