An industrial staple of Newton County has made changes to the way it operates. La-Z-Boy in Newton has removed its assembly line and replaced it with cellular manufacturing.

"We're looking forward to moving into the next years with continued growth and prosperity here in Newton," said Kurt Darrow, president and CEO of La-Z-Boy.

With a ribboncutting Tuesday, each of the La-Z-Boy plants in the United States has officially completed the process of changing the way its furniture is made.

"We went from traditional batch and queue, which is large departments moving large amounts of material from department to department, with cellular manufacturing," said plant manager Don Mather. "You condense that down to six people in each cell, building the entire piece of furniture from beginning to end."

And with each team building one chair, officials say the process is sped up tremendously. Under the old assembly line system it would take three days to complete one piece of furniture. Now it takes about an hour, meaning a custom chair can make it into your living room much sooner.

The same amount of furniture will still be produced, but the change to cellular manufacturing will help alleviate the monotony of the job for employees, while also promoting better health.

"Part of the problem with doing one single task every day is the wear and tear on the body, but because they're cross-training now, they're doing different tasks throughout the day," said Mather. "So the wear and tear on their bodies is not nearly as bad as it used to be."