Case Study 3

LEAN MANUFACTURING
JOBELLE LEANO SUSTAIN ODID1
Polywood
What is POLYWOOD?
Doug Rassi, founder and CEO of Polywood, makes
outdoor furniture crafted from recycled plastic.
Today, POLYWOOD recycles millions of landfill-bound
and ocean-bound plastic containers every year, as
well as reusing any scrap from the production floor.
Truckloads of local, regional, and globally-sourced
post-consumer plastic are transformed into genuine
POLYWOOD lumber which is then used to construct our
wide array of furniture
Polywood
Brady Maller, Polywood’s EVP of Strategy and Sales,
credits an early focus on Lean Manufacturing with
making the company’s growth sustainable.

Poly-Wood is very serious about lean manufacturing: There are

no paper trails. In fact, there’s no paper anywhere “We have a
Poly-Wood algorithm,” Doug Rassi says. “It’s all on flat screens.
We pull in electronic orders; they go into the algorithm and to
the machines. Then they get built, labeled and invoiced. No one
ever touches a piece of paper.”

Source
https://www.econestph.com/products/cassabag-t-shirt-medium-with-i-am-a-
cassava-bag-print?
pr_prod_strat=copurchase&pr_rec_id=7f8d6931f&pr_rec_pid=498135623274
0&pr_ref_pid=4979799719972&pr_seq=uniform
 Polywood

We went on a lean manufacturing journey with a heavy focus on

engineering scalable processes that became the foundation for
our capacity to build to order, and quickly ship thousands of
products on demand.

To Rassi, this is the future of retail: making goods made to order

and shipping them directly to the customer with one-day lead
times. For retailers, this philosophy removes the pain of
warehousing and inventory, thus minimizing the risk of overhead.
 The Principles of Lea

Polywood Principles of lean Manufacturing

Define value:
What makes Poly wood Lean manufacturing Map out the value stream:
Create a flow:
PLOYWOOD works in a made to order basis to lessen their inventory
Establish a pull:
space. Most of their space in occupied by materials and machines.
Perfect

There are no paper transactions in the process of making

POLYWOOD.

Workers make one product at a time until it’s finished. The system is
precise so that they achieve near zero defects. This maintains
POLYWOODs quality

As of now they receive thousands of orders, but they try to maintain

this system for some of their furniture until they reach perfection. They
claimed to still inventory some of their popular designs to keep up
with the demand.
Sources

https://www.casualliving.com/web-exclusive/behind-the-scenes-look-polywood-
manufacturing-plant/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimvinoski/2022/03/30/how-polywood-turns-
millions-of-pounds-of-plastic-waste-into-beautiful-outdoor-furniture/?
sh=7fb54dcd6325
https://www.polywood.com/get-inspired/genuine-stories/polywood.html