Our client is one of Europe’s leading food producing companies who produces and processes high-quality beef, pork, bacon and chicken, as well as a wide range of convenience products and added value cooked meats, for leading retailers across the UK and internationally.
Its UK operation has extensive facilities, located across the country – from farms and hatcheries to primary production, processing and packaging factories. The organisation supplies its products in response to customer and market demands, primarily focusing on the UK retail market, while
also encompassing major foodservice and wholesale clients within its portfolio.
While positioning our client as the head of operational excellence for the UK, an analysis of facilities across the UK revealed that the company were facing several major problems concerning operations and performance; resulting in a significant loss of money across sites. The initial application site sliced cooked meats plant, in particular, was enduring a weekly loss of approximately £195k.
Upon observation, the skillset of both operational and functional managers required vital improvements; in order to be able to effectively identify waste levels within existing processes.
The layout of the factory floors was also proving inefficient – with a high level of raw waste materials, and a lack of visual controls in place to help monitor movement of materials and priority settings. Further problems included suspect quality standards and a high number of customer
complaints.
Although the company had previously attempted to resolve elements of these challenges through the implementation of lean foundation toolsets; low engagement between operations and cross-functional teams, combined with a lack of ownership, meant attempts at performance improvements had proven unsustainable. This was due to the directive style of management and ideas not being encouraged at shop-floor level, significantly impacting on delivery of important cost metrics.
Identification and removal of waste, development of employees and robust operational processes were urgently required in order to drastically reduce costs and enhance line performance
With these challenges driving the project, Project7 intervened to design, develop and evaluate an effective pilot Lean Leadership Programme – initial application within one of the major operating sites, and progressively expanding across the majority of UK sites.
The scope of work encompassed several key areas:
- Design, delivery and evaluation of a Lean Leadership Training Programme
- The development of the facility layout plan and specification for a Lean Leadership Academy at the sliced cooked meats plant [initially]
- Execution of Line Performance Improvement projects at initial application sites
- The strategic deployment of the company operating system model
- Full coaching of the operating system central team, to co-deliver all of the above
The Lean Leadership Academy programme [LLA] was deployed and completed over a three-week period; addressing 52 operational leaders, covering technical, engineering, logistics and HR fields – enabling Line Performance Improvements [LPI] across a total of seven sites.
A sustainable timing, resource and investment plan was carefully developed, and incorporated into routinely review meetings – occurring at daily, weekly and monthly intervals. Milestones were established with flexibility, in line with our clients’ requirements, and project process reports were
formulated on a weekly basis to detail budget delivery across project timelines.
Together with P7’s implementations, our client invested in forming their own continuous improvement team – allowing relationships between teams to form quickly and be easily maintained.
P7’s intervention has led to a significant improvement in Leadership and Line Performance, including;
- Cost Saving Value of ideas raised and implemented through Value Stream Mapping activity = £991.6k
- Implementation of site tactical initiatives resulted in saving of £2.4m across seven sites
- Reduction of 66% in financial weekly loss at the initial application site
- Gold Standard Accreditation for food factory – enabling engagement with, and production for Marks & Spencer
- 60% reduction in customer complaints