Kansas City
Brunson Instrument Company, Kansas City, is one of a very few American companies that specializes in industrial measurement. The 81-year old company helps solve measurement problems for manufacturers of large machines, including aircraft, paper mills, satellites, ships, machine tools and particle accelerators.
After working with Missouri Enterprise to implement some “Lean Enterprise” tools and techniques and earn ISO certification, Brunson found that they had some unused manufacturing capacity. But Brunson is a relatively small company without a large, organized research and development function to continually develop new products to add to their line.
Knowing that the company had excess manufacturing capacity, Missouri Enterprise suggested a Eureka! Winning Ways® program to Brunson. Missouri Enterprise Growth Coaches facilitated the Growth Strategies Idea Generation process in February 2007.
The experience made enthusiastic advocates out of all who participated and the group used the Eureka! Winning Ways® process to generate 87 very practical ideas for new products or improvements to existing ones. The company is already receiving multiple orders for two of these new products and expects them to generate more than $750,000 in new sales this year.