A North Carolina store fixture company embraced lean manufacturing earlier this year to cut costs and counter foreign competition, and its leaders are already enthusiastic about the results. "It works, no doubt about it," says Tony Daniel, owner, president and CEO of Carolina Cabinet Co. The company, located in the small community of Black Creek, has been in business 30 years and claims some of the biggest names in retailing among its customers. Carolina Cabinet has annual sales of $12 million and has 115 employees working in nearly 200,000 square feet of shop and warehouse space. Since January, when the managers of Carolina Cabinet chose its machining department as the first candidate for extensive study and subsequent realignment, overtime in that department has dropped 75 percent over the comparable period of 2004.
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