Exceptional Results in Manufacturing

THE CHALLENGE

Facing a combination of growing pressure from customers to drive product costs downwards and rising commodity prices, a large food manufacturer looked to Carpedia to work with internal resources to implement operational improvements to maintain current profit levels.

THE RESULTS

Focusing on the Manufacturing and Materials departments, the project team worked closely with client resources to achieve the required operational performance improvement of a 25% increase in labor productivity.

Some of the key changes enabling this improvement included:

Improved Labor Productivity

• Increased production line capacity by staffing production lines on a rotational basis to ensure that all lines ran through shift breaks and lunches
• Reducing line downtime due to cleanliness through establishment of new cleaning SOPs
• Reducing line downtime due to changeovers by enhancing planning capabilities within the production schedules
• Implementing a resource planning tool within the Management Operating System allowing Managers to crew the plant according to labor requirements by SKU
• Identifying and eliminating non value-added activities to reduce labor hour requirements

Material Improvements

• Enhancements to the inventory management system to reduce line downtime due to material shortages
• Implementation of tools to provide visibility to material usage so yield variances could be root caused immediately to limit yield loss
• Modifying equipment to lessen the amount of product lost due to spillage
• Ensuring all ingredient totes were emptied completely capturing 41,000 pounds of material that would otherwise have been disposed
• Reducing material tracking paperwork by 85%
• Installing a tempering tool to reduce the amount of ingredients lost due to microwaving thereby increasing material yield by 10%
• Reducing line downtime by ensuring that materials were pre-staged to avoid wait time at start-up