Manufacturing - Gynecomastia Garments
Since Marena's tiny beginning in our garage, we have continued to grow until now we are one of the most advanced sewing factories in North America and a leading niche apparel manufacturer serving several specialties.
From our earliest days, we have been fully committed to meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Proudly, we still are. Customers around the world tell us that we must be the best at quickly delivering quality-manufactured medical compression products at a globally competitive price. With these customer requirements in mind, we have dedicated ourselves to meeting these customer standards through:
Quick Delivery:
We believe that physically manufacturing our products as close to the users of our products is critical. For example, we currently are able to receive USA orders - any product - until 6pm and ship it the same day to arrive as early as 8am the next morning. This means customers get faster service and can own less inventory of our products.
Quality Manufacturing:
We believe that owning our manufacturing facilities gives us the control we need to meet our customer's standards of quality. Contract manufacturing is not part of our strategy while locating Marena manufacturing facilities around the globe is.
Globally Competitive Pricing:
By passionately focusing on reducing system costs instead of "unit costs" which most companies look at, we seek to continuously reduce pricing to our customers without sacrificing quality or service.
Our ability to meet/exceed these customer expectations hinges on our manufacturing and operational philosophies. We are students of several modern manufacturing theories that have led us to develop "The Marena Way", our customized operating system. The theories that are blended into the Marena Way are:
QRM (Quick Response Manufacturing):
Dr. Rajan Suri developed QRM in 1995. Its foundational principles focus on implementing speed and reducing lead times not only in manufacturing but across our entire company.
TOC (Theory of Constraints):
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt first introduced this theory in his book, The Goal. It is based on the fact that, like a chain with its weakest link in any complex system at any point in time, there is most often only one aspect of that system that is limiting its ability to achieve more of its goal. For that system to attain any significant improvement that constraint must be identified and the whole system must be managed with it in mind.
Lean Manufacturing:
This is an initiative focused on eliminating all waste in our manufacturing processes. Lean production is aimed at the elimination of waste in every area of production including customer relations, product design, supplier networks and factory management. Its goal is to incorporate less human effort, less inventory, less time to develop products, and less space to become highly responsive to customer demand while producing top quality products in the most efficient and economical manner possible.
Kaizen:
A Japanese term that means continuous improvement, taken from words 'Kai' means continuous and 'zen' means improvement. The true intent of kaizen is to focus owners and operators of a process to make continuous improvements to that process which are within the scope of the process participants.
Five S (5S):
This is a visually-oriented system of cleanliness, organization, and arrangement designed to facilitate greater productivity, safety, and quality. It provides a foundation for more responsible behavior on the job-better work, better products, better morale.
Toyota Sewing System (TSS).
This is a Japanese modular manufacturing process based on the famous Toyota Production System (TPS) first implemented in Japanese auto production. TSS allows workers to stand up and move around from machine to machine during production - in an assembly line but not a strictly defined one - managing single piece flow.
The Marena Way is based on our belief that a lower system cost is more advantageous to customers than lower unit cost. Therefore, we strongly believe that manufacturing our products in our own facilities located close to our product user is a better alternative than outsourcing our products to low-cost countries. Our close-to-customer manufacturing model gives us abilities that our competitors cannot enjoy from their outsourcing/import & warehouse/export operating model:
Quick Delivery:
We do not need to forecast (guess) what our customers might buy and then possibly have guessed wrong causing a missed deadline. Our manufacturing facilities receive orders until the end of our operating day and still are able to deliver any product first thing the next morning.
Quality:
Because there are no significant inventories in our operating model, our customers are assured the latest styling, improvements and developments when they place their order.
Globally Competitive Pricing:
By locating our manufacturing facilities close to our customers, we can take advantage of lower transportation and importation costs.
The Marena Way works and has been recognized by industry experts! We have been selected by the State of Georgia for several state-of-the-art manufacturing and engineering projects and often showcase results of these projects to other manufacturing companies (not just apparel companies!) during Marena plant tours.
The Marena Way, Marena's customized operating model, is one of the methods. The Marena Group has developed to meet or exceed customer expectations.
