Lean Design Heats Up Geothermal Pump Assembly Line
Energy-efficient and environmentally sound, geothermal heat pumps use the Earth’s natural temperature cycles to provide consistent and balanced heating and cooling. Ironically,assembly of these pumps can often be inconsistent and unbalanced.
Florida Heat Pump (FHP) Manufacturing, a Fort Lauderdale-based manufacturer of water source and geothermal heating and cooling equipment, faced this assembly line challenge for many years. Because about 80 percent of FHP’s business is custom-built to order, the company’s batch-and-queue assembly process required FHP to keep inventories of finished goods, raw materials and work-in-progress at high levels to meet peaks in demand.