Founded in 1936 and headquartered in Columbus, Nebraska, Behlen Manufacturing Co. is a family-owned manufacturer specializing in steel fabrication, agricultural equipment, metal building systems, and grain storage solutions. Over its 90-year history, the company has grown into a diversified manufacturer serving agricultural, commercial, and industrial markets. POWERS was engaged specifically in Behlen Country, the division that manufactures durable equipment for the agricultural and rural lifestyle markets: livestock gates and panels, feeders, stock tanks, watering systems, kennels, and other farm and ranch equipment, sold to farmers, ranchers, agricultural retailers, and rural property owners through an extensive dealer network across the United States.
Behlen Country delivered $2.6M in annualized savings, lifted units welded per labor hour 19%, and raised startup scores from 60% to 94% in the first consulting engagement of Behlen’s 90-year history.
Behlen Country, the farm and ranch equipment division of Behlen Manufacturing Co., had grown faster than the management systems and supervisory routines that ran its plant. In the first consulting engagement of Behlen’s 90-year history, a POWERS assessment found company goals that had never been cascaded, limited KPI visibility at the point of execution, a production plan that changed daily, and supervisors spending a substantial part of each day chasing missing components. Over 27 weeks focused on production and maintenance, POWERS implemented the Digital Production System (DPS), established leader standard work and startup and short-interval follow-up routines, streamlined tier meetings, ran leadership development workshops, and set up an S&OP process. Units welded per labor hour rose 19%, startup scores averaged 94% against a 60% baseline, cumulative labor efficiency savings reached $692,892 through week 24, more than twice the $341,615 target, and savings measured in weeks 16 through 24 annualize to $2.6M.
Growth had outpaced the systems that ran Behlen Country, and for the first time in its 90-year history, Behlen brought in a consulting firm.
Founded in 1936 and headquartered in Columbus, Nebraska, Behlen Manufacturing Co. is a family-owned manufacturer specializing in steel fabrication, agricultural equipment, metal building systems, and grain storage solutions. Over its 90-year history, the company has grown into a diversified manufacturer serving agricultural, commercial, and industrial markets. POWERS was engaged specifically in Behlen Country, the division that manufactures durable equipment for the agricultural and rural lifestyle markets: livestock gates and panels, feeders, stock tanks, watering systems, kennels, and other farm and ranch equipment, sold to farmers, ranchers, agricultural retailers, and rural property owners through an extensive dealer network across the United States.
Significant growth, organizational changes, and expanding responsibilities had created a need for greater structure, consistency, and discipline in daily operations. Management systems and supervisory routines had not kept pace with the business, and the floor had little view of its own performance: one team member remembers running processes without knowing how much was produced or how much time was lost. The work relied heavily on individual experience and informal practices, and best practices had not been documented or standardized. On the floor, management behaviors leaned toward reactive problem-solving, and Behlen wanted proactive leadership in their place: consistent follow-up, performance accountability, coaching, and timely corrective action.
Rising demands for productivity, quality, and customer service called for stronger alignment between operational targets, performance measures, and daily management practices. Internal leadership teams were focused on meeting daily operational demands, so Behlen needed dedicated outside resources, added bandwidth, and specialized expertise to accelerate improvement without disrupting ongoing operations. POWERS was the first consulting firm Behlen had ever worked with, and the engagement began with an end-to-end assessment of the Management Operating System (MOS) to identify improvement opportunities, optimize resource use, strengthen leadership capability, and establish processes that would sustain long-term results.
Six structural gaps between company goals and daily execution on the floor.
Goals and strategies were defined specifically for the assessment and had not previously been cascaded or operationalized. Only a small percentage of leaders were aligned with the company’s priority ranking, and alignment was weakest on strategies.
Discussions with team members revealed limited visibility of KPIs where the work was done and inconsistent awareness of area-level performance. The plant relied heavily on back-end data systems such as PI, while access gaps and a lack of training limited the use of that data at the front line.
Management Operating System tools were underused or seen as disconnected from daily execution. Short-interval follow-up was not being performed, and area-level performance reports were not used to control the shift. The tools existed, but their results were not reviewed or acted on.
The production plan changed daily, and what counted as the priority was inconsistent from one area to the next. Work expectations were not clear, and work standards were not trusted.
Supervision spent a substantial portion of each day chasing missing components instead of following up and supervising. Shortages and product that could not be located drove rework and kept loads from being completed for shipping.
Engagement with hourly teams and mechanics highlighted untapped knowledge and missed opportunities for those teams to contribute to line reliability and process improvement.
Implemented DPS and built the leadership routines that run on it.
POWERS worked inside Behlen Country for 27 weeks, focused on production and maintenance. POWERS’ Digital Production System (DPS) put performance data in front of plant leadership, supervisors, and leads, with startups and short-interval follow-up tracked in it and capacity utilization measured for the first time, at 70.4%. POWERS coached leadership to make data-driven decisions using DPS, and set the throughput goal in the plant’s own terms: more units welded per labor hour.
Roles and responsibilities were defined for plant leadership, and leader standard work was established for leads and supervisors. Robust startup and short-interval follow-up processes gave each shift a routine for checking performance and correcting course, tier meetings were updated and streamlined into the plant’s communication process, and action items drove the removal of barriers to performance. An S&OP process was established, and the work across departments broke down the silos between them.
On the floor, whiteboards and DPS put downtime and hour-by-hour output where the team could see it and pull it up when needed, as Nate Blaser describes it. POWERS worked with schedulers to build department scheduling workbooks that take data from the ERP system into Excel; for scheduler Kandie Fiala, the work has taken hours off the individual schedules produced every week. Breaking machine downtime down by cause showed the team where to focus on older equipment, and standardizing work processes and identifying the roadblocks in them improved efficiency and welding.
Leadership development workshops built the coaching and follow-up skills the new routines depended on, and POWERS worked with leadership to put a culture of accountability in place. Continuous improvement was integrated into the implementation itself so the process would sustain after the engagement. By the close of the project, DPS was implemented and the MOS processes were established and sustained, and Brad Robeson told the Behlen team they had come in with a certain expectation and were leaving with a big toolbox.
Six measurable gains, led by labor efficiency savings at more than twice the target.
Annualizing the savings measured in weeks 16 through 24 of the 27-week project gives a run rate of $2.6M a year.
Units welded per labor hour rose from 3.1 at the start of the project to 3.7 at the end, the throughput measure the engagement set out to improve. On the floor, Ulises Fuentes describes a welder going from four an hour to six, and the number of welders earning high-performance pay going from three or four to twelve.
Startup scores averaged 94% against a 60% baseline, a 34-point gain, with robust startup processes in place and every startup tracked in DPS.
Cumulative labor efficiency savings reached $692,892 through week 24 of 27, more than twice the $341,615 target. The CFO calculates savings monthly and the project ended mid-month, so weeks 25 to 27 are not included.
Schedule attainment reached the mid-80s to low 90s percent in two consecutive months, the highest since Behlen began measuring it a year earlier.
Breaking machine downtime down by cause took the mesh line, one of the lines running older equipment, from about 2,180 minutes of downtime in a month to about 500, as Tim Coughtry describes in the video.
A thank-you from Behlen Country.
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Behlen Country delivered $2.6M in annualized savings, lifted units welded per labor hour 19%, and raised startup scores from 60% to 94% in the first consulting engagement of Behlen’s 90-year history.
Behlen Country, the farm and ranch equipment division of Behlen Manufacturing Co., had grown faster than the management systems and supervisory routines that ran its plant. In the first consulting engagement of Behlen’s 90-year history, a POWERS assessment found company goals that had never been cascaded, limited KPI visibility at the point of execution, a production plan that changed daily, and supervisors spending a substantial part of each day chasing missing components. Over 27 weeks focused on production and maintenance, POWERS implemented the Digital Production System (DPS), established leader standard work and startup and short-interval follow-up routines, streamlined tier meetings, ran leadership development workshops, and set up an S&OP process. Units welded per labor hour rose 19%, startup scores averaged 94% against a 60% baseline, cumulative labor efficiency savings reached $692,892 through week 24, more than twice the $341,615 target, and savings measured in weeks 16 through 24 annualize to $2.6M.
Growth had outpaced the systems that ran Behlen Country, and for the first time in its 90-year history, Behlen brought in a consulting firm.
Significant growth, organizational changes, and expanding responsibilities had created a need for greater structure, consistency, and discipline in daily operations. Management systems and supervisory routines had not kept pace with the business, and the floor had little view of its own performance: one team member remembers running processes without knowing how much was produced or how much time was lost. The work relied heavily on individual experience and informal practices, and best practices had not been documented or standardized. On the floor, management behaviors leaned toward reactive problem-solving, and Behlen wanted proactive leadership in their place: consistent follow-up, performance accountability, coaching, and timely corrective action.
Rising demands for productivity, quality, and customer service called for stronger alignment between operational targets, performance measures, and daily management practices. Internal leadership teams were focused on meeting daily operational demands, so Behlen needed dedicated outside resources, added bandwidth, and specialized expertise to accelerate improvement without disrupting ongoing operations. POWERS was the first consulting firm Behlen had ever worked with, and the engagement began with an end-to-end assessment of the Management Operating System (MOS) to identify improvement opportunities, optimize resource use, strengthen leadership capability, and establish processes that would sustain long-term results.
Six structural gaps between company goals and daily execution on the floor.
Goals and strategies were defined specifically for the assessment and had not previously been cascaded or operationalized. Only a small percentage of leaders were aligned with the company’s priority ranking, and alignment was weakest on strategies.
Discussions with team members revealed limited visibility of KPIs where the work was done and inconsistent awareness of area-level performance. The plant relied heavily on back-end data systems such as PI, while access gaps and a lack of training limited the use of that data at the front line.
Management Operating System tools were underused or seen as disconnected from daily execution. Short-interval follow-up was not being performed, and area-level performance reports were not used to control the shift. The tools existed, but their results were not reviewed or acted on.
The production plan changed daily, and what counted as the priority was inconsistent from one area to the next. Work expectations were not clear, and work standards were not trusted.
Supervision spent a substantial portion of each day chasing missing components instead of following up and supervising. Shortages and product that could not be located drove rework and kept loads from being completed for shipping.
Engagement with hourly teams and mechanics highlighted untapped knowledge and missed opportunities for those teams to contribute to line reliability and process improvement.
Implemented DPS and built the leadership routines that run on it.
POWERS worked inside Behlen Country for 27 weeks, focused on production and maintenance. POWERS’ Digital Production System (DPS) put performance data in front of plant leadership, supervisors, and leads, with startups and short-interval follow-up tracked in it and capacity utilization measured for the first time, at 70.4%. POWERS coached leadership to make data-driven decisions using DPS, and set the throughput goal in the plant’s own terms: more units welded per labor hour.
Roles and responsibilities were defined for plant leadership, and leader standard work was established for leads and supervisors. Robust startup and short-interval follow-up processes gave each shift a routine for checking performance and correcting course, tier meetings were updated and streamlined into the plant’s communication process, and action items drove the removal of barriers to performance. An S&OP process was established, and the work across departments broke down the silos between them.
On the floor, whiteboards and DPS put downtime and hour-by-hour output where the team could see it and pull it up when needed, as Nate Blaser describes it. POWERS worked with schedulers to build department scheduling workbooks that take data from the ERP system into Excel; for scheduler Kandie Fiala, the work has taken hours off the individual schedules produced every week. Breaking machine downtime down by cause showed the team where to focus on older equipment, and standardizing work processes and identifying the roadblocks in them improved efficiency and welding.
Leadership development workshops built the coaching and follow-up skills the new routines depended on, and POWERS worked with leadership to put a culture of accountability in place. Continuous improvement was integrated into the implementation itself so the process would sustain after the engagement. By the close of the project, DPS was implemented and the MOS processes were established and sustained, and Brad Robeson told the Behlen team they had come in with a certain expectation and were leaving with a big toolbox.
Annualizing the savings measured in weeks 16 through 24 of the 27-week project gives a run rate of $2.6M a year.
Units welded per labor hour rose from 3.1 at the start of the project to 3.7 at the end, the throughput measure the engagement set out to improve. On the floor, Ulises Fuentes describes a welder going from four an hour to six, and the number of welders earning high-performance pay going from three or four to twelve.
Startup scores averaged 94% against a 60% baseline, a 34-point gain, with robust startup processes in place and every startup tracked in DPS.
Cumulative labor efficiency savings reached $692,892 through week 24 of 27, more than twice the $341,615 target. The CFO calculates savings monthly and the project ended mid-month, so weeks 25 to 27 are not included.
Schedule attainment reached the mid-80s to low 90s percent in two consecutive months, the highest since Behlen began measuring it a year earlier.
Breaking machine downtime down by cause took the mesh line, one of the lines running older equipment, from about 2,180 minutes of downtime in a month to about 500, as Tim Coughtry describes in the video.