The Scenario
A client required some urgent Technical assistance due to sickness of their Technical Manager.
In action
The first task was to prepare for the BRC audit that was imminently due and re-establish the GMP standards in the factory. This was done by coaching and mentoring the factory managers and supervisors with regards to the expected standards from both BRC and M&S. Once this was completed then the task was further enhanced by working closely with the GMP champions in each area of the factory and looking at how to improve the day to day standards during production.
The Lean ‘5S’ tool was utilised to clear the area of all unnecessary clutter whilst the staff were re-trained on "Clean as you Go" tasks and expectations.
5S represents Japanese words that describe the steps of a workplace organization process. English equivalent words are shown in parenthesis
- Seiri (Sort)
- Seiton (Straighten, Set)
- Seiso (Shine, Sweep)
- Seiketsu (Standardise)
- Shitsuke (Sustain)
In simple terms, the five S methodology helps a workplace remove items that are no longer needed (sort), organise the items to optimize efficiency and flow (straighten), clean the area in order to more easily identify problems (shine), implement colour coding and labels to stay consistent with other areas (standardise) and develop behaviours that keep the workplace organized over the long term (sustain).
Action plans were put into place to ensure that the standards were maintained.
Once the standards had been improved to an acceptable standard then the next part of the task was to ensure Non-conformance root cause, actions and closure was completed this was also done using coaching and mentoring methods and working closely with the staff responsible for investigating the non-conformances and implementing the actions and close outs.
Other aspects of the role were to audit against BRC and M&S standards the maintenance team and their PPM schedules and paperwork ensuring these met the standards and implementing any actions from these as required, Pest control and Hygiene clean-downs standards were also audited and monitored.
Follow-up Project
Post BRC the requirements changed and the emphasis was moved to process control and waste management within the business looking at the top 7 give away products. Learning4Leaders worked with both the factory personnel and engineering teams to tighten the tolerances on each product to bring them back in control. This involved trials and process audits to establish correct yield loses at each stage, ensuring that these were captured so that commercial had visibility of the true cost to produce these products. Further to this, further yield losses and improvement efficiencies were sought. Finally once we had a working model we could then adjust all specs and paperwork with the agreed changes and implement into the bakery
Results
Client obtained an ‘A’ Grade BRC audit.
GMP compliance increased from 70% to >95%
Reduced yield loss, improve efficiency, greater profitability.