IRD Glass Finds Success with Eureka! Winning Ways
Company Background
IRD Glass is a precision glass and ceramics products manufacturer that works on very difficult orders with close tolerance. They have two locations, both in Minnesota, with their main building of 30 employees in Litchfield. Founded in 1982, the company has $5 million in annual sales and projects to grow this year. IRD Glass supplies products to companies in several industries including aerospace, defense, automotive, industrial, lasers, circuit board and wafer inspection, and recently began building components for micro-electronic mechanical systems (MEMS).
Situation
IRD Glass recently set a company priority to grow the business, but they were not sure how to achieve that growth. They did not have a process to decide which ideas were feasible, realistic, and profitable. Ideas for growth ranged from marketing messages to increased capacities and new capabilities. IRD Glass had a lot of ideas for growth, but needed help corralling those thoughts into implementable and achievable projects.
Solution
In early 2008, IRD Glass President and General Manager Dirk Kvale received an email invitation to join a peer group of manufacturing executives to discuss industry issues at an Enterprise Minnesota Peer Council. He participated in a roundtable that discussed a tool – Eureka! Winning Ways – for “engineering growth.” Executives from two different companies related their experience working with the process. It sounded like the type of program that could help IRD Glass make decisions on new projects. They were interested in trying new things to feed growth and decided to give Eureka! Winning Ways a shot.
IRD Glass brought in Enterprise Minnesota specialists to facilitate the Eureka! Winning Ways process. During the first cycle, they generated 84 unique ideas to jumpstart growth. From that initial batch, they narrowed them down to four concepts to send through a computer screening process. The process, known as Merwyn, compares ideas to a database of more than 4,000 other concepts from around the globe. The Merwyn process provided IRD Glass with varying degrees of caution about each idea. From that information, the company narrowed down to two ideas. They formed two teams to research how each idea could be implemented successfully.
Results
IRD Glass’ research showed that one idea could be implemented immediately – a mini shop, or cell, exclusively for prototypes. The new cell will allow them to be more competitive in developing prototypes and growing business. Already implementing the idea, IRD Glass:
- Purchased new equipment for the cell, investing $250 thousand dollars into their business to prepare for growth
- Plans to move three current employees into the prototype cell, and sustain work for those jobs even while the economy is down. They plan to hire more employees as growth necessitates.
- Expects, for the next year, the new cell to generate $1 million in growth. Over the next several years, they plan to go from $1 million to $5 million growth.
The other idea, a marketing concept, is on hold while IRD Glass continues to research its feasibility. They also built ‘idea generation’ into their continued growth strategy.