Hinckley Yachts Counts On CW Hayden For

Marine Products, Process & Safety Expertise

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Hinckley Yachts has worked closely with CW Hayden on their marine supplies and personal protective equipment for years.

Hinckley, a custom yacht builder based in Maine, also has locations throughout the East Coast, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Georgia and Florida.

When Chad Forsaith, Strategic Supply Chain Manager at Hinckley Yachts, joined the company in 2018, he was already familiar with 3M products from his previous position.

Forsaith built his relationship with CW Hayden, starting out with a vendor-managed inventory program at their Trenton, Maine, location. There, CW Hayden managed the inventory for the production site, ensuring they always had the products they needed to build the yachts.

Today, CW Hayden works with Hinckley to provide most of their day-to-day consumables, PPE and painting and composite work supplies. Although COVID-19 did impact their business, the company is still seeing demand for their yachts. They've adapted to the new social distancing requirements, spacing out workstations where possible.

In addition to their supplier relationship, the CW Hayden team provides a number of other services, including safety training and process improvement.

Supplies Tailored To A Busy Painting Program

Hinckley runs a robust service department, the majority of which is done in Portsmouth, R.I. The company services 500-600 boats every winter. Part of this work includes one to two paint jobs every week, all winter.

To keep up with this demand, CW Hayden provides painting and sandpaper supplies as well as PPE. They offered Hinckley greater availability of their products, Forsaith said. Hinckley can put in orders by 3 p.m. and have the supplies delivered the next day.

With on-time delivery at 95% or higher, Hinckley always has the products they need, he added. Their vendor-managed inventory service ensures that CW Hayden is always tracking what they're using. As inventory levels change, CW Hayden automatically adjusts stocking to keep pace.

"Consignment saves the end user time and reduces capital requirements."

And when it comes to pricing, both sides are very proactive, Forsaith said. They'll share market pricing back and forth and adjust it on both sides.

Strategic Use Of Supplies & Tools Help Reduce Project Time

When Forsaith first began working with CW Hayden, he wanted to see if they could use some of their winter service work as an opportunity to reduce man hours.

"CW Hayden became key to this project," Forsaith said. "They were great and got me samples of new products. They also encouraged me to try new tools and provided us with free tools and consumables to see how they performed in our service department."

Going one step further, CW Hayden also worked with Forsaith to review their existing service processes to identify areas where they could also save time.

They found that the metal polishing shop could reduce their project time by 60% if they changed the tools and abrasives they used on the raw stainless steel. Almost 100% of the metal on their yachts is stainless steel, so this level of time savings really added up.

By the time they'd finished their testing, they'd replaced 100% of their abrasive products. While the products were more expensive than their former items, they actually lasted longer and reduced their overall spend. This, coupled with the time savings, made the project a success.

"It takes longer to polish the steel parts than it does to fabricate them," Forsaith said. "Reducing the time required allowed us to go from four people in the shop to three people. [CW Hayden's ideas] made a huge difference."

"Consignment improves efficiencies by enduring customer does not run out of product."

With the Portsmouth location serving as their unofficial testing headquarters, Hinckley was able to start rolling out the new supplies and processes to their Southwest Harbor location in Maine.

New PPE Leads To Better Morale

In addition to providing products and process improvement ideas, CW Hayden also works with Hinckley on their PPE. They helped Hinckley select new PPE, which was welcomed by the company's employees. CW Hayden also performed required fit tests, making sure that each employee had the right PPE for their unique needs.

"They managed to make the guys more comfortable," Forsaith said. "They really appreciated the level of care CW Hayden took."

When COVID-19 hit the U.S., getting PPE became very difficult as supplies were redirected to law enforcement and first responders. CW Hayden made sure to set aside inventory for their existing customers.

"They took care of us and did very well by us for our PPE needs," he said.

"Supply chain reliability is a huge benefit to any company."
John Murphy, Senior Sales Representative 18 years

Partners In Problem-Solving

Innovation is at the heart of Hinckley's relationship with CW Hayden, Forsaith said. He works closely with David Crowell, CW Hayden's president, and well as his local rep on new test projects.

"We go back and forth about our new projects," Forsaith said. "We're always solving issues and evolving projects in a R&D phase until we make progress. I never feel like we're done improving."

"Building a business relationship and trust results in new products and production efficiencies."
John Murphy, Senior Sales Representative 18 years

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