Client Successes

Conversion increased 300% while several costly activities in the current process were eliminated.  Profit impact was $11.7 million per year.

DNT wastewater treatment was reduced and the chemical cost per pound of product was lowered as well. Improved operations' understanding of the plant and lowered costs by stopping the over-controlling of certain operating parameters.

Increased total usable roots by over 100 percent, and the average usable roots rose to more than 110 percent above their minimum specification.

Soiling claims were reduced 75% and a monitoring program was implemented to maintain the improvement.

Scheduled maintenance was reduced from 60 minutes to 20 minutes, improved output per man-hour, increased throughput, and reduced seconds.

Company reduced every time measurement by 60% and reduced post office rejects by 50%.  Bills went out quicker, customers paid quicker, resulting in savings of $1 million per year.

Revenue per hour was increased 33%, contributing $47 million per year to the company's bottom line.  Testing was done at the best performing center in the company to demonstrate the potential of MVT to gain improvement for even the best performers.

Repair time for circuit type A was reduced 20%, circuit type B was reduced 60%, and circuit type C was reduced 50%, thus protecting a $4 billion business.

Repeat trouble reports were reduced by 42%, while unexpectedly reducing the time per task by 10%.  The total savings amounted to $1.3 million per year.

Service reps had over 800 suggestions.  MVT identified those that helped reduce repeat calls by 50%.

MVT helped the development of a marketing strategy.

Case volume improved by 20%, revenue by 40%, and physician office satisfaction by 2.5 points (10 point Likert Scale).

Reduced non-productive time by over 26.2% and turnover time by over 42.7%, creating capacity for $4.85 million in additional cases per year.

Identified ways to decrease door-to-doctor time by 39.3% and total turnaround time by 17.2%.

Understanding key drivers maximizes incentive program return with sales rep performance increasing by 20%.

Increased production, decreased costs, and improved product quality valued at tens of millions of dollars.

With almost no additional cost, one small change improved chip quality 80%, which saved over $180,000 per year.

Increased pulp production results in an annualized savings of $1.6 million.

Fiber losses down 60%, valued at $997,920 per year.

After four years of continuous process improvement success at this site, still achieved $1.3 million per year in savings.

Cost-benefit analysis on the J3 Paper Machine for a cost avoidance of $2 million.

Reduced chemical usage in the bleaching process by 15%.

Production increased 110% while decreasing costs and improving quality.  Achieved savings by avoiding equipment modifications and reduced raw material and energy costs.  Bottom line showed a $4 million per year benefit.

By focusing on factors influencing yield and furnish cost, the off-quality rate was reduced and saved the plant over $1.8 million.

Reduced the cost-per-ton of recycled fiber for over $5 million in total savings

Call centers increase paper sales to mid-size customers by 50%.

Reduced change times by 19% and substantially lowered energy costs, worth more than a quarter of a million dollars.

St. Helens has generated economic benefits for the company and quality benefits for the customer.

Over 1,500 tons per year of waste was eliminated by solving a 20-year old problem.

Improved the competitiveness of the operation to the point that it was outperforming Chinese products on quality and price in China.

Reduced FSI dependence and reallocate to other media with a potential to increase sales and margin dollars by many millions. Counter-intuitive findings in the MVT results were discovered.

Identified actions that provide tens of millions of dollars in financial benefits and better-satisfied customers.

Tested ideas that included direct mail, associate activities, in-store sales and service processes, labor allocation, pricing, displays, signage, store layout, verbal and written customer communications, and product assortment. They have identified a specific set of actions that increases sales and profits by tens of millions of dollars.

Production and reliability issues were resolved resulting in increased production and improved customer satisfaction.

MVT helping to continuously improve reliability and efficiency in power generation equipment.  MVT being used in product development and improved customer satisfaction.

Failure rate of a shaft was reduced to zero, while eliminating an entire production operation.

A dozen MVT experiments drove total plant yield and output rates to unprecedented levels.

Product introduction time is being reduced from ten years to two months while revenues are increased 7X.

Determined which of four proposed locations, eight program attributes, and 14 different degree program offerings would generate the highest interest level. What they discovered surprised them. Now instead of trying to predict the response of their target market, they know exactly which location, program attributes, and degree program offerings generate maximum interest in their new program.

Travel service enhanced with continuously improved service and brought more value to members.

Testing determined high variability in the K-Number procedure itself.  A new K-Number procedure was developed.  Variability was reduced from 194% to 15% total, which permitted the plant to improve capability.

Actions were identified which are expected to substantially increase retail sales.

20% increase in sales has the potential to deliver millions of dollars to the bottom line.  An unexpected bonus was that employee satisfaction also improved.

Realized an astonishing 110% increase in response rates in comparison to the control group, along with an approximately 8% increase in balances and significantly increased revenue.

A new business kit increased dollars per order by 28% with a predicted value of $8 million.

Improving bank customer check printing accuracy saves Deluxe $106,928 per year and one of their banking clients $241,856.

Retention rates of "at risk" customers raised from 90% to 96% increasing retention revenue by $2.1 million to date.  Customer use of voice response unit increased 15%, saving $500,000.  Manual intervention in automated order entry system cut 75%, saving $750,000 per year.

Testing indicated that zero credits were possible.  Credits being issued immediately after the test were down 40% from previous levels and dropping steadily with an ultimate potential savings of $1.5 million per year.

Establishing a selling environment with the right mix of elements impacts the bottom line.

Improved contract-signing rate while minimizing labor costs (number of contracts needing account manager intervention improved by 15%.)

Cost per production unit was reduced $0.23 per unit with an estimated worth of $19 million.

Client data setup errors reduced 33% for an annualized savings of $512,000 in internal costs and improved customer satisfaction.

Reduced waste by 90%, saving $9.8 million per year.

Increased revenue per order by 22% and annualized revenue gain of $457,000.

Identified actions to increase sign-up for a new product while revealing tactics that would be a non-productive investment.

Reduced by half the number of defects introduced in a newly developed software release.

Portion of customers reached doubled from 30% to more than 60% - even more impressive, the rate of lead generation tripled!

After an entire year of implementation this call center operation has continued to more than double the percent of calls connected, percent of calls completed, and sales leads generated for its customer.

Check reorder revenue raised 20%, all in a declining industry

Product variations with the use of a consumer survey resulted in strong early market performance and led to a considerable expansion in the following year.

Created a 12% increase in average order value, eliminating effort and spending on non-valuable activities while establishing a solid process for call center reps to succeed.

Two inbound call centers conducted increased sales and have used an innovative implementation approach to raise annual revenue per customer by up to 20.6%

With a churn rate that resulted in turnover of one-in-ten of its valuable customers, Directo launched an MVT to better retain its customers. After implementation of the findings customer churn was reduced by 20%.

Consistent application of MVT in the process creates more and more savings, well over $1 million per year of recurring improvement.

After more than 30 years of frustrating experience, MVT identified improvements that increased capacity 5%.

Pump failures were reduced by a factor of 5, which reduced maintenance cost $450,000 annually.

First Pass Pounds and First Pass Yield increased 2.8%, which was worth $1.43 million.

Variation was reduced by one-half, enabling savings of over $1 million and decreasing cycle time by 10 days for the product.

Run time was improved by 30% with no cost increase or capital expenditure.  Capacity was increased by 40 million pounds.

$586,000 of direct product improvement, $250,000 waste reduction, and $2 million in downstream savings.

Over 20% improvement was achieved on the spinning process yield.  Wound was increased over 18%.

$5 million per year savings by virtually eliminating a constant problem.

Problems that have been around 20 to 30 years solved in three to six months.

Reduced measurement variation from 75% to less than 1%, tripled capacity, increased feed rate, and reduced cycle time resulting in an immediate savings of over $1 million per year without additional costs.

Used MVT process for over 20 years, in many different companies on three continents - has produced tens of millions of dollars worth of breakthrough results in all settings

Inquiries increased 138% through weekly newspaper articles and increased communications to service organizations.

17 machines in eight plants in two countries - control charts are moving in the right direction and improvement in financial performance continues to pick up speed

Targeted projects in paper industry lead to dramatic increases in employee involvement and tens of millions of dollars in improved bottom-line results.

Increases in a Chemical Process Chemical product cycle time was reduced 25% resulting in a sales increase of more than $1 million.

The improvements in viscosity control were worth $900,000.

Reduced distillation product losses, raised reaction and distillation capacity, increased unit reliability and other planned cost savings add $1.5 million to bottom line.

The measurement system required significant improvement before the MVT.  In spec production improved from 80% to 95%, which was worth $4.5 million.

Increasing production by 13% for more than $1 million in improved gross profit.

An experiment was run on a key ingredient in a hair care product.  The experiment reduced variation, lowered cycle time from 38 to 30 hours, and protected $8 million in sales.

Made significant increases in plant capability and substantial reduction in operating costs.

Reduced damages and injuries during construction to produce safer working conditions, uninterrupted service, and happier customers.

Meter reading exceptions were reduced 26.17% and pre-billing exceptions by 30.3%.

The monthly call abandon rate was reduced 3.93%.

The average lead time for installing gas service was reduced by 75%, while missing no due dates.

Developing a team environment, reaching a common understanding of key measures, and resolution of a process conflict increased yield from 68% to 90% generating a significant bottom line impact.

Increased participation in a Disease Management Program to improve healthcare and clinical outcomes. Lower health care costs showed a 32% net improvement in participation in a short period of time. These results have been sustained in an extended post-implementation review.

Identified actions to make enhancements in interactions with current and prospective program participants. Improvement in effectiveness of enrollment and engagement efforts with direct mail, telephone communications and face-to-face interactions.

Engagement rates increased which has contributed to improving overall program success. MVT has resulted in early success in engaging populations previously deemed difficult to engage.

Client's member participation in the disease management program soared by 31% in just four months. Improving healthcare outcomes and lowering costs.

Increased service levels, introduced new/alternative products, set pricing, improved marketing and advertising effectiveness, and reduced costs by lifting productivity and efficiency.

Doubled the photographer hiring rate while reducing costs and maintaining personnel quality. Preventing managers from having to divert time from other duties saved $9 million in opportunity costs.

Increased sales by double digits by focusing on factors that not only increased sales but also identified efficiencies to be gained.

Experiments with mass communications and donor visits that have increased monthly outright-giving dollars from Alumni & Friends by 52%.

Improved students’ satisfaction with their collegiate experience, while also increasing fall-to-fall freshman retention by ten percentage points. The average incoming ACT score rose by over 2.0; and the number of incoming students with ACT scores of 30 or above improved an astonishing 950%!

Experienced an eighty-three-percent increase in outright giving, a nineteen-percent increase in freshman registration, and a two-point increase in the average ACT score of incoming students.

Increased overall 2010 freshmen enrollment by nineteen percent above 2009. At the same time, they achieved a ninety-four-percent increase in the number of incoming freshmen with an ACT score of twenty-four or above.

Experiments with mass communications and donor visits that increased cash gift dollars from Alumni & Friends by eighty-three percent over the previous year!

A three-day MVT enabled Lincoln to bring a new, fully developed product to market. All machines are now running at full capacity.

Reduced the cost for producing a high strength product by seventy percent. The team learned how to better control strength and how to respond to the inevitable variations in incoming pulp characteristics. The improvements are further helping production costs and bottom-line performance.

Needed to improve the dryness from the waste solids so it could cross the threshold of actually producing profitable BTUs instead of being a liability. They increased solids six percent, exceeding their needed goal by fifty percent.

Improved winder acceleration over 200 percent and overall winder productivity by twenty percent. Not only is the winder no longer the bottleneck, but total overall quality is at its highest level ever, maintenance issues are down, and many sub-optimizations by the different shifts and machines have been eliminated.

Big improvement in environmental emissions with improved energy efficiency on a Kraft Recovery Boiler.

Need to re-engineer a product in a competitive market environment. Produced the product changes needed at less than half the expected cost increase.

After innovative work improved the measurement system they focused on productivity. Reduced energy cost almost 10%

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Improved paper quality problem from the worst quality of seven competitors to the second best in the grade segment. This opened a new profitable market. They also reduced costs and chemical consumption and increased the speed at which improvements occur.

Reducing Chemical Costs

Needed to control chemical usage in order to be competitive in the marketplace. They not only stopped the increase in total chemical cost but turned it around which resulted in a cost decrease, a total improvement of more than 5%. Best of all they developed a strategy that not only reduced costs but also improved overall paper company performance.

Paper formation on the #4 paper machine was ranked as number 7 out of 7. The paper formation quality rating became second best for an improvement that customers could see with their naked eye.

Spool waste was reduced by 83%, enough paper to print 32 million copies of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.  Savings were $3.25 million per year.

Boosted sales and profits for large supermarket chains while creating a revenue increase for Maplehurst from the added sales.

Identified and implemented ten new initiatives from sixty-eight viable alternatives and has positively impacted both sales and margin through informed targeted spending. The result has been improved operating results even during a very difficult economy

Meijer has completed multiple MVT experiments, tested over sixty improvement ideas, and implemented winning ideas that are contributing tens of millions of dollars of incremental financial benefits.

Increased run speed by 7%, saving $300,000 annually.

Experiment with recycled paper used to make egg cartons resulted in the largest single efficiency improvement in plant history

Mississippi Lime needed to increase the tons per scheduled hour through their primary crushing system. After implementation of the MVT Process, they were able to increase tons per scheduled hour by thirteen percent and tons per man hour by fifteen percent.

More than two tons per day of production, which had been going to scrap, was improved and resulted in annual savings over $500,000.

Several thousand pounds of highly valuable product was being held back each year as unsuitable.  Identified and corrected measurement system problems and saved over $1 million per year.

Identified actions to be implemented across its acquisition sales force, results indicated that the three best practices can target an increase in excess of 25% sales growth

Production increased 50%, saved $450,000 in planned capital expenditures, and reduced labor and material cost over $150,000.

Reduced variation, shortened cycle time, eliminated rework, and increased throughput to the tune of $5 million in additional sales.

A 15% capacity improvement was achieved which was worth $2 million per year in additional sales.  An increase of 20% to 25% was projected which would add even more to the bottom line.

Described critical levers in advertising media and shared experience and vision as to how MVT can rapidly achieve breakthroughs in advertising performance.

Package sealing was improved to 90%, eliminating the leakage problem.  Solving this problem avoided an expensive package redesign, saved $1.2 million in capital, and improved cost savings and production time.

Increased output of clay granules 200% to 300% while improving product quality.

Production increased allowing a gain in market share adding $800,000 in annualized profit.

Introducing and managing a process improvement system in a geographically dispersed organization - with a contrast between his experiences with MVT and six sigma.

Team has achieved approximately $435 thousand in annualized savings in power usage and expects to get another $200 thousand per year by the end of the first half of 2004.

Saved $66,000 in soda ash usage before experimentation, improved the quality and consistency of the brine while lowering the cost of treating it

Needed to increase production of potassium hydroxide to meet customer demand. Identified ways to make a new product that their system was not designed to make all without interrupting current operations and maintaining their history of safe, reliable operations.

Substantially reduced steam consumption (the second highest raw material cost) and increased run time, which reduced the cost per ton on caustic produced.

Improvement efforts in chemical process manufacturing, with big payoffs and knowledge gained translating into a world-class operation. MVT program is delivering millions of dollars to the business.

Described four critical projects that, in addition to being valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, are helping their management to institutionalize process improvement and MVT.

Dramatic improvement in chlorine bleach quality, providing better product consistency while reducing costs and increasing production capacity.

Olin Chlor Alkali is institutionalizing the MVT Process across seven plants in the division. After eight years of using the MVT Process, Olin has completed dozens of MVT projects that have yielded tens of millions of dollars in successes. Olin has excelled in refining a process to identify, prioritize, allocate resources, measure, and maintain benefits from their MVT efforts

Reduced shipping costs by reducing variation in the strength of the caustic they produced, they were able to use fewer rail cars to achieve the same shipping weight. Saved over $1.5 million per year in transportation costs.

Changes from complete blocking to selective blocking increased 85%.  The resulting Caller ID sales improvement was 300%.  Company estimated the value of this improvement at several million dollars annually.

Changing voicemail systems finds best communication elements while saving over $1 million in marketing costs while retaining customers.

19% reduction in late installation of high capacity circuits that can lead to $11.95 million annually.

Organization is driving costs down and elevating sales through no-cost actions identified in the MVT process.

Identified actions to improve set-up time and reduce waste with the potential to deliver millions to the bottom line when applied to all plants.

Individual helpful actions increased sales by over 13%, while other actions increased sales by almost two new accounts per salesperson per month.

Increased uptime as much as 15%, increased throughput as much as 12%, and reduced scrap by as much as 60% the cost savings and additional revenues from two plants were worth over $1.3 million

The QualPro MVT process plays an important role in assessing the digital media messaging impact. Pilot Flying J uses a process that focuses on creating messages that first and foremost help customers. Digital media has allowed us to deliver messages that facilitate a fast and easy customer experience while delivering superior financial results at Pilot Flying J

Pilot Flying J was looking for ways to increase fuel efficiency by 0.2 to 0.3 miles per gallon. Since fuel consumption is the primary or secondary cost for any trucking fleet, improving mpg performance is essential to businesses that are shipping products.

Substantially increased inside store sales and gross margin dollars during recessionary times. Restaurant operations (with approximately 300 locations) enhanced sales and reduced operating costs. Reduced advertising investments by one third without decreasing revenues.

Drove margins up over 2.5 percent. The average check went up three cents, and profit per check increased by six cents! The revenue mix shift in these categories went up 0.8 percent on average. This activity will result in annualized Gross Profit gains of over $7 million.

Five initiatives produced a three-percent to four-percent growth in like/like sales with reduced marketing costs.

Pilot tested over fifty ideas intended to improve inside sales and implemented a series of actions that have been proven to deliver millions of dollars in increased sales and profits.

Twelve helpful factors had a 6.5% positive impact on overall inside store sales as the industry experienced a 5–10% sales decline.

MVT identified several improvement actions, including a way to totally eliminate a bottleneck step in the process. They tripled their production rate, while lowering raw material cost, decreasing scrap, and expending zero capital dollars.

Sales of company policies increased 1.294 policies per week, potentially worth over $750 million in annual sales.

Attorney representation rate fell from 36% to 28%, which was worth over $25 million per year in savings.

Improved customer retention resulted in $8 million in profits and $200 million in sales.

Increased direct mail response rates almost 15%.

Various channels: retaining policy holders, reducing insurance claim fraud, increasing direct mail effectiveness, and optimizing advertising expenditures worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Identified most effective use of TV, radio, billboard, and direct mail dollars.  Resolved long-standing discussions and differing views.

Reduced mail volume by 25% while maintaining virtually the same number of sales.

Comp sales impact following implementation of helpful ideas across all stores has been astoundingly close to the impact predicted by the MVT analyses. The MVT Process is making a very real impact on QuickChek performance.

In order for supervisors of 4,500 technicians to spend more time in the field, Qwest wanted to know what supervisor tasks could be eliminated without reducing Quality Jobs per Day (QJD). The MVT tested seventeen supervisor tasks and found that over half could be eliminated. Results? Not only did QJD not fall – QJD went up 10%.

This installation process had an average cycle time of eighty days. Five helpful ideas improved that cycle time by 35%.

Strategy and day-to-day execution that has produced a broad and successful MVT deployment.

Needed to reduce cycle time for installing new service for a large family of products. The historical average immediately dropped 17%, once all helpful factors were implemented and hurtful were stopped the improvement totaled 40%.

Bindery run time was increased nearly 25%, worth $1.25 million per year.

Over $1.5 million in savings were identified in an existing process.

Savings of $1.4 million per year were achieved in a process that had been operating for decades.

Press downtime was reduced by 58%, saving $500,000 annually.  Bonus benefits consisted of increased revenue from extra press time, improved customer satisfaction, higher on-time delivery, higher quality, and increased employee job satisfaction.

Converted a product initially struggling to meet strength specifications to one that has even surpassed the ASTM standard’s ability to gauge bond strength. Increased throughput by eleven percent while maintaining this high bond strength.

The strategic value of MVT in the retail environment and the critical management tactics that ensure maximum organizational benefits and help achieve nearly immediate ROI.

During the test, the 24 stores participating out-performed the other stores by 4.3%, approximately $1 million in additional sales.

MVT has changed the planning process dramatically, testing has become an integral part of running the business.

Increase in comp sales and bottom-line profit with each percentage point increase in comp sales translating into several million dollars of bottom-line profit

Lamination defects were costing $4 million per year in wasted materials.  Defects were reduced 50%.  Defects were further reduced with more experimentation for a cost savings of over $1.5 million.

In just eight weeks, no-cost actions were identified and implemented which eliminated late billings.  0% late resulted in direct cost savings exceeding $2 million and a dramatic reduction in unhappy customers.

Order Flowthrough improved from below 50% to over 95% (i.e., order flows through without manual intervention.)

Reduced the time interval from a residential customer to the successful completion of the installation.

Improved customer service, billings, installations and repairs, data center operations, inventory management, and sales for close to a billion dollars in results.

Dr. Miller will discuss the state of today’s healthcare environment and the need for rapid breakthrough improvement. He will also present his viewpoint on the challenges of attempting to improve an extremely complex system involving numerous stakeholders with often-misaligned incentives. Additionally, Dr. Miller will provide his perspective on the benefits that a performance improvement system like the MVT Process offers to our American healthcare system.

Sentara Healthcare is in the midst of an MVT project involving nurses, hospital administrators, and other healthcare professionals in several units within the eight participating hospitals to test multiple ideas aimed at attaining 99.99 percent and above hand-hygiene compliance.

$3 million increase in crude oil throughput without taking the time and great expense to add pump stations.

Response rate rose by 39%.  Changing the mailing procedures saved the company $2 million per year.

$11 million increased sales plus $4 million reduction in expenses.

Designed a bill that was more appealing, easier to understand, and did not cost any more to produce.  The customer satisfaction rating increased by 25%.

MVT found ways to recover more plant without using additional resources.  Plant recovered was tripled for a value of $16 million per year.

Reduced failures by 20%, removing a big risk to this $1 billion revenue stream.

Doubled participation in the PAC contribution process and increased contributions by 238%.

Overall improvement in annual sales was estimated at $3 million. This was accomplished with no additional staff while maintaining the same levels of customer satisfaction and center accessibility.

Increase in service center productivity results in a reduction of fines and reduced labor costs potentially valued at $1.5 to $2.1 million annually.

On-time installations went from 84% to 98%, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

Some pre-planning by repair personnel, prior to customer visits, dramatically improved customer satisfaction and saved over $1.5 million per year by reducing repeat visits.

MVT identified factors that reduced the critical interval from 32 days to 23 days.  Not only were late charges avoided, projected corporate revenues increased over $1 million per year.

167% of Quota in Business-to-Business Sales

The worst performing district achieved a 300%+ increase in sales while the best performing district jumped over 50%.

Missed appointments were reduced by 17.7% with an estimated value of $2.1 million

Sales were increased 12.4% with a predicted value of $1.9 million.

Decreased total inventory value by 10%, a $2.3 million reduction in working capital.

Over 180% improvement in the accuracy of coding service orders.  Number of customer claims reduced 89% and refunds reduced 36%.  The estimated worth was $4.7 million.

Increased number of referrals by over 40%, which resulted in increased revenues of $3.6 million.

Creating the most effective circular resulted in improved sales (up to 3%) and increased profits (up to 5%.)

How senior leadership of an organization can use the MVT process to harness the power and creativity of their workforce, focusing organizational energy on actions that increase profits, enhance customer satisfaction, and improve competitive position

Realized an immediate 35% reduction in service order errors, worth $365,000 in annual savings, not counting the improved customer satisfaction.

Benefits of testing lots of ideas across many functions and how organization-wide involvement can be very helpful to maximizing sales, margins and shareholder value.

Optimizing innovative store remodeling program.  Changes in newspaper insert, radio, and direct mail programs expected to significantly impact both revenues and costs.

Increased production rates for base TiO2, a key component used to make paint almost five percent, worth over $11 million in revenue per year! All of this without major equipment expenditures.

Increasing the collection rate at Truman Medical Centers, Inc. is a critical objective that can provide increased cash for this safety net hospital serving patients throughout Kansas City, Missouri. Truman has already arrested a trend that has been declining over years.

High no show rates have the potential to impact Truman’s productivity as well as the effective care for its patients.  Improving no show rates has the potential to increase revenue as well as patient, provider, and staff satisfaction.

Lengthy throughput times are often noted as unacceptable by patients and can result in decreased satisfaction for patients as well as Truman staff.  Truman has achieved significant improvement in outpatient throughput times.

Millions of dollars of increased sales.

Unifi employed the MVT¨ Process to determine the key repair components and how to cost effectively repair the infant positions so that they perform up to standard. As a result, the plant knows when their precious maintenance dollars are spent, they get results!

How can a brand new machine performing as designed by the manufacturer be made even better? Without experience and history in operating this new equipment, Unifi was able to characterize and understand the influence of all machine parameters on key quality characteristics.

Splices may break during transfer, causing downtime, lost productivity, and sometimes packages that are too small to be considered first quality. Unifi achieved dramatic improvement in splice strength. This experiment identified some surprising results, making a big dent in this $500,000 per year opportunity.

Reduced expensive textile yarn breaks by over 40%. This process not only facilitated local work force and management action to prevent backsliding, but also continued to yield further improvements.

For years, Unifi has used a costly and time-consuming prescour in an attempt to wash away trimer and avoid its ill effects.  MVT experimentation is not only allowing Unifi to determine factors that reduce trimer, but may also totally eliminate the need for a prescour.

Unifi’s textile plants include tens of thousands of texturing positions where breaks in the yarn are a major quality and cost issue.  Besides random breaks, texturing positions are in fact “special causes” with many repeated breaks at the same position.  The average number of hours the process ran before another repeat break was improved over 250%.

Unifi was able to reduce by 40% the amount of substandard nylon downgraded. This led to a $700,000 cost improvement without any need for new capital.

Since mid-2008 Unifi has used MVT to achieve successes that include large reductions in costly texturizing breaks, substantial increases in first-quality yield in yarn production, and dramatic improvement in sales force effectiveness at competing with foreign competition. Continuously launching new projects to reduce costs, increase quality, and better communicate their value proposition to customers and prospects

Yarn breaks result in small packages and lost productivity as the machine position sits idle. Findings allowed Unifi to take its polyester texturing operation to another level . . . a 30% reduction in breaks per machine hour!

The presence of small filaments affects the performance of the yarn in downstream texturing operations and at the end customer. Unifi identified actions to reduce small filaments by 70%.

Even though price was unquestionably important in this very competitive yarn market, Unifi found other factors that could also have a significant impact in the customer decision. Best of all, Unifi closed over $750,000 in targeted sales during the MVT before the results were even known.

Improving member health through improved clinical model interventions that reduce hospitalizations while maintaining/improving costs and quality indicators. They reduced hospitalizations by 20%, an innovative approach to improving healthcare delivery

Methods were found to know and hold constant the risk of producing any off-grade product while meeting all EPA and CARD regulations.

Vapor pressure reduction allowed butane to be removed from the product and improve capacity.  Bottom line savings were $600,000 annually.

Identified actions to reduce down-time associated with product changes by 18% to 68% that lead not only to an increase in capacity, but also a substantial reduction in inventory

How MVT helps Visa member banks increase sales and profits of their card portfolios.

21% increase in cardholder spending for small businesses enrolled in the Visa Extras loyalty program

Using MVT to optimize the market expansion program strategy by 1) increasing the effectiveness of program elements, 2) avoiding wasted investment in ineffective tactics, and 3) reallocating resources from low-yield activities to ones with a high return on investment, expected to contribute growth in excess of $1 billion over the next 10 years

"Broke" reduced by 30% that resulted in savings of $1.23 million annually.

Increased member participation in the ConditionCare program. Increasing enrollment and engagement in the program is enabling WellPoint, through its affiliated health plans, to manage more chronically ill members, which yields enhanced quality of life and reduced medical claims costs for members.

WellPoint’s executive leadership team set a goal to increase member engagement in their chronic disease management program by 10% in nine months. They had a record-breaking enrollment rate in the first five weeks and achieved a 10% improvement.

Restored sales growth in the catalog by 10%, worth $8 million per year while driving more incremental business to the internet and retail chains.

The role of MVT as a tool for corporate turnarounds, as well as continuous improvement.

Identified modifications in catalog cover and content, as well as increase consumer response and sales through care center and internet channels

No-cost actions were implemented which increased plant capacity over 25% and improved profitability $3.2 million.

Scum was eliminated completely which was worth $833,000 per year.

Reduced cycle time by 10% and decreased late deliveries by 75%.  Satisfied customers increased sales by $3.3 million.

Improvement in sales results for an entire line of products is expected to be worth $30 million in increased revenue.