New Tools Help Steer Boatbuilders Course

Growing up around Glacier Park where his family ran a 45 ft. tour boat on Two Medicine lake for more than 30 years, Jason Cajune came by his love of water and watercraft naturally. Maintenance of Glacier’s fleet of boats built as far back as the 1920’s was also part of the business, so it came as no surprise when Jason and his wife Vedra began building drift boats out of their garage in Whitefish in 1997.

Today Montana Boatbuilders, Inc., is located near Livingston, Montana, in the heart of river fly fishing territory –the free flowing Yellowstone, the mighty Missouri, the famed Madison, the Big Horn, and Big Hole to name a few.

“We moved to Livingston in 1998 to be more centrally located and closer to larger markets,” he said. “Our main product is driftboats for river fly fishing, and we’re in the middle of fly fishing world here.”

Montana Boatbuilders first carved its niche in high-end drift boats with a hybrid construction composite that makes a traditional wooden boat stronger, lighter weight and requires less maintenance. The technique uses marine grade plywood for the hull in conjunction with Kevlar-sheathed polypropylene-honeycomb material, and other high-tech marine technologies, some borrowed from the aircraft industry. A number of coating techniques and finishes go into completing a boat with durability and lasting beauty.

“These boats are amazing,” says MMEC field engineer Al Deibert, who oversaw a recent project with the company.

Customized Product

They are customized to include higher end wood-working components for the dry boxes (for storage), seats, and other bells and whistles that add to their appeal. These are made from white oak, mahogany and sometimes fir. The company also makes duck hunting boats and small sporting boats. See www.montanaboatbuilders.com

With five employees, it makes about 12-15 customized units per year with an average selling price of $10,000. The typical buyer is male, between 40 and 60, and may have recently moved to Montana from other locales.

The equipment for boat building lends itself nicely to boat repair, and soon Montana Boatbuilders was also spending a lot of spring and summer energy in custom boat repair. It can refurbish traditional wood construction and full fiberglass refinish and do complete restructuring of a boat when needed.

Kits Added

More recently, the company added boat kits for several of its more popular models, the Freestone, Freestone Guide, and the Osprey, in a variety of sizes. The main pieces for the boats are cut on a CNC machine, packaged, and sent to customers across the U.S. who like to build and are more budget conscious. Buyers for kits are very different from those buying the custom work, opening up a wider customer base.

“They are more likely to be college students or a father and son team building one in their garage. They are shipped to places like Michigan, California, and all over,” Jason said.

As business expanded, he began to see more need for efficiencies in the operation and turned to the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center and University Technical Assistance Program for help.

Valuable Tools for Managing

The company now has a work instruction document that enables it to evaluate materials usage and time tracking. It is helping them realize cost and time efficiencies.

"MMEC/UTAP engineer Brian Pendergast was the picture of professionalism in his work with us, and he saved us thousands of dollars with the in-depth documents that we use everyday,"Jason commented.

"When we first got started my wife and I were the only employees doing everything, building, bookwork, and brochures. Suddenly we had a waiting list and had to hire and train on construction. We were in production mode overnight and found that we had no idea how long processes took us, what amounts of material we were going through and tools. We hired our first employee about four years ago and have added one per year since. The last two years we’ve been trying to get more efficient.

"I took the MMEC Lean Manufacturing workshop and have started to try to implement some of those strategies. It's an ongoing process, and I'm really still at the 5-S steps. (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain It). Brian took on the monumental task of evaluating our processes from milling raw wood and making finished pieces to composite fiberglass lay-up, and coating and finishing work.”

These involve as many as 300-400 steps for building a custom driftboat, a process that takes from four to six months. The MMEC/UTAP engineer separated them into various sub-assembly processes and to facilitate tracking time requirements at each step. Using Microsoft Excel, he built a database and spread sheets the company could use as a management tool to further track information and compare with the different products.

Help Identify Efficiencies

Asked if he was surprised by the involved processes and time it takes to build a unit, Brian said, "These boats are beautiful; they're incredible, in a class by themselves. I am not surprised by the amount of effort that goes into them. But when you are not building in high volume, it is sometimes difficult to spot inefficiencies." Brian himself is building a wooden canoe and understands the painstaking effort to construct a fine craft.

"What we did was standardize their task sheet, looking at materials and time usage so each step can be compared against another project,"he explained. The employees already logged each step as it was completed, but entries were hand-written and not broken down into subassembly sequences. As one piece cured, they could work on any number of different things; but for new employees, not knowing the next step in process might hold up completion. The standardized sheets also help them with the question, "What do I do next?"

MMEC/UTAP also prepared a bill of materials tool, based on each task in a subassembly. Ten subassemblies are involved, each requiring materials and manipulation of those materials to make boat, Brian explains.

Having this management tool makes it easier to visualize what materials are similar throughout the boat building process. It shows cost differences when changing the type of seats, for instance, and makes billing for custom work much simpler. Here’s how it works. The summary tab of each raw material has unit and cost of each. Based on what the task requires, the quantity of material is added for each step. The spreadsheet tallies direct materials cost for that step.

"We can use them to see if we're making money at our price or not and maximize the use of our tools and team," Jason said. “For example, some of the seats we build are time consuming and complicated pieces of furniture. They have to be furniture quality and boat grade, i.e., waterproof and UV resistant. The MMEC/UTAP work helped me see what materials were used and the time it took. It showed that my pricing was good. It became the benchmark for other seat projects.

Time Investment Reduced

"We have cut hours on a typical boat by 25 percent based on knowing the processes, tracking time and parts use more efficiently. The comparative data helps in manufacturing processes, taking less time to do the same thing. The biggest thing in conjunction with Lean and the sheets Brian made is that we don’t stockpile parts like we used to. We're using more the pull/Kanban concept"

Jason's greatest reward in the business comes from seeing a customer pick up the driftboat he's been dreaming about and waiting months for.

"It's great. They are very excited," he said, as he looks forward to his next delighted customer and continuing growth and prosperity for his company. "It's also great to be able to live here in MT in an area we love and use our product on the rivers. My family goes out and floats on our days off."

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