by TOLLESON, Ariz. — Legends Home, the Tolleson, Arizona-based whole-home furniture manufacturer and one of the nation’s leading domestic entertainment and mattress manufacturing partners for major retailers, today announced a partnership with the Arizona Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Arizona MEP) to strengthen its lean manufacturing capabilities.
The collaboration has already generated an estimated $200,000 in annual direct cost savings and 50% reduction in WIP inventory, eliminated roughly 4,000 unnecessary operator steps in a single production area — a powerful early proof point of what focused, disciplined operational improvement can deliver.
“Lean has always been part of our foundation and will remain critical to our future,” said David Reitz, president, Legends Home. “The
training and Kaizen event gave our employees the tools to identify waste, improve workflow, and take ownership of the changes needed to support our continued growth. We appreciate Arizona MEP’s expertise and energy in supporting our journey.”
Arizona MEP began by delivering lean basics training to approximately 30 Legends Home employees across leadership and frontline teams, establishing a shared language for waste identification, flow optimization, and continuous improvement. This foundation was immediately put to work in a focused Kaizen event targeting one of the facility’s highest-impact bottlenecks: the cabinet door assembly process.
The cabinet door area handled a wide range of product variations within a single footprint, creating excess operator movement, inefficient flow, and constrained throughput. Through real-time shop floor observation and cross-functional analysis, the team identified a high-volume door that could be isolated and optimized independently.
The redesign converted the layout from a large, production footprint into a compact L-shaped production line — separating high-volume and low-volume workflows, removing non-essential equipment, and creating a more direct path from raw materials to finished assembly. The result was immediate and measurable.
“Arizona MEP helped our team turn lean concepts into practical improvements on the shop floor,” said Ed Berman, director of operations at Legends Home.
A defining feature of the Kaizen initiative was its inclusivity. Legends Home ensured full participation from supervisors with limited English proficiency by providing translation support throughout the event — reinforcing the company’s long-standing people-first culture and ensuring that improvement capability was built at every level of the organization.
Employees who completed lean training were immediately able to apply their knowledge during the Kaizen event itself, accelerating the pace of change and creating lasting capability rather than one-time results. Arizona MEP also identified additional savings opportunities beyond the Kaizen scope, including a potential $31,200 utility tax refund and approximately $650 per month in ongoing cost reductions.
The partnership establishes a repeatable lean methodology that Legends Home intends to apply across future improvement efforts — building the operational muscle to keep pace with growing retail demand while maintaining the quality and consistency its partners rely on.
