Custom Engineered Wheels: Creating alignment and transparency at every level

Headquartered in Baldwyn, Mississippi with plants in both Baldwyn and Reynosa, Mexico, Custom Engineered Wheels (CEW) specializes in custom injection molding, polyurethane molding, lost core molding, and custom plastic wheels. CEW’s brands include X-Core, Skyway Tuff Wheels, and Shox, and each year CEW sells over 22 million wheels to customers around the globe (video here).

As part of the CEW team’s dedication to continuous improvement, Chief Operating Officer Edgar Yerena tells the story of how he and his team went from collecting data manually to using Guidewheel’s real-time platform to accelerate their improvement: 

One of CEW’s core values is the Lean Manufacturing principle of “we strive to perform better tomorrow than today.” As part of that, in 2021 Edgar and his team recognized that advancements in FactoryOps technology now made it possible to get accurate, real-time visibility into their machines quickly, easily, and in a way that was accessible and transparent for their full team to understand and use.

He and his team evaluated potential options and started using Guidewheel’s FactoryOps platform. At first, they tested Guidewheel just on key pieces of equipment. Then they swiftly expanded it to 41 presses and pieces of key equipment across both their plants in Baldwyn, Mississippi and Reynosa, Mexico: 

“Prior to Guidewheel, we had to collect data manually for key metrics like production, down times, down time codes, scrap, and cycle time that are essential for our Custom Engineering injection molding process. 

Previously, our team members had to spend a lot of time tracking that data manually, and without a high level of accuracy. 

With Guidewheel, we now get those metrics automatically and accurately, so our team has been able to instead invest that time in improvements.” 

Once they had key metrics all tracked automatically in real-time, Edgar and his team focused on how to integrate the data into decision making. One key opportunity, for example, was their daily meetings.

Edgar describes how they started to explicitly reference Guidewheel in their daily production meetings, using live Scoreboards out on the production floor. In each meeting, teammates display the clear, visual data on each topic as they speak to key metrics like production, cycle time, and OEE. The visual data makes each of these meetings more impactful and effective—and the principle has now gone beyond daily production meetings. Now, each manager pulls up Guidewheel when presenting on key metrics in their regular Monthly Reviews and longer-term planning sessions. 

Seeing the data visually during meetings has helped using data for key decisions become a habit and part of the culture. Now, members of the Operations team consistently use Guidewheel both in meetings and throughout the day to carefully monitor production performance and to determine where to strategically focus their resources to continuously improve. 

In addition to strategically focusing resources, Edgar also shares how he and his team have used the ability to reference the same source of truth in Guidewheel from anywhere to respond much faster to challenges and opportunities:

“The advantage of being able to review the information from any device in real-time is amazing. The alert system by text message and email in particular is of great value so we can closely monitor the top processes and react in a timely fashion when any support is needed.

Now, no matter if I am traveling to any part of the world for business, I can always have access to see the performance of both plants in the USA and Mexico. The Guidewheel system allows my Operations team to focus on the most important aspects of production.”

More broadly, Edgar and his team have also been thoughtful about how to build on Guidewheel to create a shared language and KPIs around efficiency. Combined with a source of truth that is visible to anyone, this shared language—all the way from machine operators to business executives—makes for smooth communication across different teams. 

It also creates transparency and buy-in for what’s best for the business at all levels. Edgar reflects on the pride it creates to work at an organization where, “Everybody knows when we’re winning or losing. Each teammate understands how their work drives the success of the organization, and that every decision they make has a direct impact on the business.”