About Manac
Based in St Georges, Quebec, Canada, Manac designs and manufactures heavy-duty semi-trailers for road transport, construction, energy, mining, forestry and agriculture sectors. The company’s products include flatbed, low-bed and specialized trailers. They also offer a line of cargo handling trailers, including grain hoppers, chip and logging trailers.
Awarded a Best Semi-Trailer in North America Award by the Trucking Industry Association (TIA) for four years in a row, Manac produces a wide range of trailers for a variety of industries and applications. The company has five manufacturing plants in North America and over 1000 employees across the country.
In 2019, the company achieved its 200,000th trailer build and is on track to achieve another production milestone in 2021. It has 70 dealers throughout the US and Western Canada.
The 200,000th unit is a tri-axle log trailer. The trailer was sold to US dealer Hale Trailer Brake and Wheel.
To celebrate this achievement, Manac arranged a party and invited all of its dealers. Charles Dutil, the president and CEO of Manac, says he’s “looking forward to building more trailers than ever before.” He has already teased a new reefer product coming in 2021.
Tervene – Connected Manager Platform
Tervene is an innovative digital tool that empowers frontline teams and top management to reach operational excellence. It enables stronger daily control, better communication, collaboration and problem-solving. It helps teams and leaders break silos, streamline the escalation of issues to top management and increase the efficiency of feedback to frontline workers.
Supervisors and coordinators use manac trailers to structure standard management practices, such as Gemba Walks and daily huddles with their teams. These meetings follow a standard agenda to ensure every issue is identified, solved or shared with the right department owner.
By using Tervene, frontline managers and supervisors at Manac can easily escalate issues to higher levels of management while maintaining their daily control of the line and reducing errors and safety risks. It also allows teams to share and track all of their activities in a central location.
For example, the production director, Dave Forgues, is able to keep track of daily shift handovers and see how well the team is running. He also can identify which employees are requiring additional training or coaching.
Using Tervene, Manac has been able to improve its processes at all stages of production. Its continuous improvement coordinator, Rendy Samson, says they have “been able to reduce the number of incidents and accidents at all levels in the organization.”
To further improve its quality standards, Manac uses a process called Lean Six Sigma. Its Quality Manager, Marc Gosselin, explains that it is “not just about putting in the same measures and the same rules for everyone.”
The quality manager also teaches team members how to recognize problems and take action on them. This ensures everyone has the necessary information to make a decision on what needs to be done next.
Tervene also helps the company focus on implementing its strategic objectives with its connected manager platform, which is designed to boost productivity and reduce costs while strengthening its daily control. The platform enables all departments to have access to the same data, which is vital for making informed decisions. This tool also allows teams to communicate more efficiently and quickly with each other, which is a key factor in achieving continuous improvement at Manac.