Inside Sales Visits Aquatic

We begin our tour…

by meeting Matt Sikes, the new plant manager. He told us about how he started in unit repairs and has worked his way up to plant manager. Having the hands-on experience of working multiple jobs within the plant gave him the knowledge he needed to improve the plant at all levels. As we walked through the plant, he would stop and inspect a few things that caught his eye. Either fixing them at the moment or taking a picture and making a note to revisit later.

After entering the plant floor, I was amazed at how clean and organized the floor was. I had previously visited the plant and the difference was night and day. As we made our way around to the production line, we were able to see where the molds were housed and the process of repair. It was interesting to see and learn that the molds were repaired in-house to avoid extended downtime. After moving past the repair area, we made our way to the assembly line.

As we walked around the line, Matt explained to us how they inspected the units, improved the base support with extra plywood, and added an extra 10lbs of fiberglass per unit. These seemingly small additions improve the overall quality of Aquatic products immensely. He had also changed the strict ruling on how many passes a sprayer could make. They decided it was better to use an extra pass or two to ensure that the fiberglass had made a complete cover to maintain the unit’s integrity.

Seeing the units produced gave us a better understanding of why production lead times can be so long at times. It is by no means due to lack of effort or procrastination. The units are produced on a conveyor assembly line that will only complete four rotations during a day shift. After seeing these limitations to production, it makes sense that a 400-unit PO could take up to 20 business days to fulfill.