Mohawk Makes Agile "The Way of Life"

Leave it to a flooring company to walk the walk when it comes to operational efficiency.

Each day, millions of people step across the carpet, ceramic, laminate, and wood products of Mohawk Industries, the world’s largest flooring company.

While the current housing construction boom and resurgence in home remodeling projects bodes well for Mohawk, it has placed pressure on the company to ensure its sales team has the tools and information needed to meet the needs of customers.

These market-driven dynamics, in part, brought Mohawk and Motion together to establish an Agile approach across the entire company to maximize efficiency.

Mobile Pricing App

One high-profile extension of the company-wide adoption of Agile involved the creation of a new mobile pricing app. Now, hundreds of Mohawk sales reps can efficiently manage their pricing in real time anywhere on the road using a tablet.

Since implementing the Agile approach that involved discovery, training and coaching of personnel involved with the mobile app initiative, positive results have emerged, including a more satisfied product development team and an exceptionally high acceptance rate. Today, 100% of the 400+ Mohawk sales agents have used the new mobile pricing app.

“We set out to create a simple, yet powerful mobile application,” said Matt Bengtson, Director of Residential Sales Operations at Mohawk. “We delivered 98% of the intended functionality and created a user experience that far exceeded expectations, in a cost-effective and timely manner. Our sales force is thrilled with our efforts and the business is enjoying the ongoing benefits.”

Mohawk closely follows housing starts and remodeling trends, knowing that residential property is most people’s largest investment and one that homeowners will invest in during various stages of life.

The company also recognizes that a well-maintained home adds tremendous value to the property and saves the homeowner money in the long term when they decide to sell.

Agile Maturity

Motion has been working with Mohawk for a little over a year, said Agile practice lead Tony Shawver, who explained that Agile maturity often takes years to be fully institutionalized at organizations.

“We’ve been able to show pockets of the business at Mohawk how they can get even better,” he said. “There’s still more to do, but we’ve had success at the project level and we’re starting to see success at a business unit (Flooring) level.”

"It’s critical to keep the company’s workforce and information systems nimble and responsive to market conditions to help the sales team sell Mohawk products to customers," said Mohawk’s Bengtson.

“Operational excellence is a key tenet of our business strategy and we leverage best practices across the enterprise to implement process improvements, increase efficiencies and reduce costs. An Agile environment helps streamline not only our information services practice but paves a path of success for our entire organization.”

Matt Bengtson, Director of Residential Sales Operations, Mohawk

Results

As part of the broader Agile initiative at Mohawk, the company wanted to “make Agile the way of life”. The Agile environment helps multiple stakeholders including sales, management, production, delivery teams, and consumers.

Other Mohawk projects that are benefiting from the Agile influence include:

• External website that showcases the company to the world
• Supply chain applications that allow smaller retailers to replenish supplies
• Distribution logistics that direct how trucks are loaded and products are shipped

Mohawk looked to Motion to achieve faster and lower cost delivery and innovation related to its technology and information system. By institutionalizing Agile, Mohawk will be able to get more done and be more innovative.