Case study: Success through innovation and innovation at MacNaught (Part 1)

Macnaught is a private company established in 1948, operating in the manufacturing and design of high quality liquid measuring, fluid transmission and lubrication devices for agriculture, automotive industries, mining and global transportation for more than six decades.

Creation and innovation is one of MacNaught’s top policies. The company has its own research and development department in charge of testing and designing new products, and constantly looking for quality productivity improvement opportunities. In this process, MacNaught also finds many reliable partners to associate with and also provide more quality products and services to consumers.

Recently, the company’s efforts have brought many remarkable achievements. For example, the BOP60 oil pump is currently selling well in the US. This is the first oil pump that can directly recharge 18V during pumping. Furthermore, the BOP60 is designed to dispense all hydraulic oils (gear oil or any other light oil) with tank limits up to 16 gallons.

BOP60 has a simple structure but still meets the needs of flexible mobility in the factory. With a flow rate of 1 gpm, the machine can deliver an average of 40 liters per pump, greatly improving overall performance through reducing the wastage rate caused by spill per pump change, reducing the number of pipe changes, improving safety, eliminating manual pumping and limiting manual oil pouring into small containers. MacNaught has also provided conversion pump heads that make it easy for their customers to use BOP in both 20-liter and 60-liter barrels, with maximum pumping rates up to 3.5 liters/min.

The control hose BOP60 is designed with 2 horizontal and vertical rotation axes to help the operator adjust the angle arbitrarily when pumping oil. Typically, a highly flexible hose design will often experience clogging problems at the swivel joints, especially with heavy oils. MacNaught’s improved washers, however, suppress this possibility. Currently the BOP60 can be used for lubricants from SAE 0W40 to 75W90.

Besides, operators can get quick training with the push of a button for oil pump and flow control options. The BOP60 power head can be routed to multiple pump bodies to reduce costs and eliminate cross-contamination.

The BOP60 product was awarded the Outstanding Innovative Product in 2019 by the Professional Tools and Equipment Assessment (PTEN) organization.

In addition to researching new products, MacNaught’s management is also focused on constantly improving old processes. After many trials, tools such as 5S, Lean, Kanban, Gemba Walk have been selected by the company to find suitable improvement methods. All of the above tools can be trained in a simple and intuitive way, thus eliciting positive inspiration from the employees. Besides, MacNaught also organized a movement called “5S champion” to encourage teamwork from their employees. The smooth implementation of 5S has laid a good foundation for future improvements as well as initially preparing for the lean production process in the factory.

Productivity and Quality Office