Background
One of the UK’s leading private brewers operates a contract filling service for over 50 clients ranging from small local breweries to international wine and spirits corporations. Their technical capability, flexibility and customer-friendly approach have won them an increasing share of a bottling market in which ever-increasing packaging variety is driving SKU levels and complexity up across the whole supply chain. Although many brewed products require careful conditioning and handling, many customers, supermarkets especially, identify and expect to be able to react to sales trends in an almost instantaneous manner. As such, changes to the production plan are frequent and can be highly disruptive if not handled quickly, efficiently and with great care.
The business has recently started a third shift to keep up with demand and whilst maintaining “on-time-in-full” delivery performance, now wishes to further increase capacity for its current customers and take-on new customers.
Task
T.A. Cook has been asked to identify, create and install improved processes, techniques and behaviours necessary to increase bottling throughput by 20%. The work encompasses production scheduling, shop floor operations and maintenance support. The aim is to
Ensure that performance is sustainable across all shifts and through seasonal product mix changes.
Approach
The T.A. Cook team determined that the work should focus on equipping production and maintenance departments to face increasing complexity and uncertainty. The six month fixed-time, fixed-cost project started by utilising a one week shutdown for some in-depth understanding of the production line, its critical machinery, performance limitations and typical failure modes. The opportunity to bring together operating and maintenance staff was also used to reinforce basic communication and problem solving skills so that upon start-up more detailed analysis of the processes and performance could be possible and appreciated by the maximum number of people.
With most products requiring a different combination of bottle, label, crown and packaging, the team has now divided SKUs into clear categories. For typical products, product mixes and sequences, the planning function can now utilise operating norms, take into account specific limitations and also set testing targets for the production department which in turn requires the maintenance team to ensure that machinery is capable of performing reliably. This has necessitated the identification, planning and management of timed and planned predictive routines as well as faster reaction to stoppages and improved change-over support.
Benefits
Since the project began, output performance has increased significantly. Production capacity has been increased by over 35%. Production plans that previously would have expected to run into the following week are now finished on-time in accordance with the newly developed “production time-line”.
The enhanced management control and reporting system has created a focus on performance for daily work at all levels and increased communication and co-operation between departments. The Engineering and Production departments are meeting daily to review work done, work required and response levels. Senior Management is reporting on a weekly basis to the Unit Director with an improved range of key performance indicators. The Engineering Foreman is providing direct feedback to the Production Supervisors and Management through a daily production performance meeting. An improved change-over process now means that the Operators receive uninterrupted change-over support which has resulted in a significant saving in change-over downtime. An employee based “continuous improvement” scheme has taken on a new lease of life and provides a direct route for the team members to present their ideas for production line, process control and customer service based improvements.
A far more performance-focused environment has developed. Clear expectations of performance levels, increased awareness of production issues and a more rapid response by the Engineering Department have resulted in a rise in production rates, as mentioned by 35% and a decrease in downtime of up to 25%. Production levels are continuing to trend upwards and with no investment in new equipment, is due entirely to the improved planning, systematic control and management/supervisory behaviours.
The enhanced communication and co-operation between all departments has underpinned the management and shop-floor activity to provide a sustainable performance improvement.
For more information contact:
Rupert Clark
Marketing Manager
Direct: +44 (0) 1183 260 229
Mobile: +44 (0) 7792 926 696
r.clark@tacook.com |
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