Shandiz Natural Foods Inc. - productivity improvement

Productivity improvement

Objectives
Through our analysis process, we determined the following key objectives:

• Increase plant productivity
• Improve management systems
• Improve management capability

Increase plant productivity

The Grant Thornton productivity improvement team made the following improvements in the area of productivity by:

• Developing standards for all plant activities
• Developing a labour resource plan to link sales to associated labour tasks
• Installing method changes to increase packaging and dry ingredient throughput
• Identifying process constraint for every product and focused improvement activity accordingly

Improve management systems 
The following improvements were made in management systems:

1. Implementation of a comprehensive management system by

• developing tools to monitor gross margin by product and improve pricing;
• designing and installing scheduling procedure to optimize material use, changeovers, and reduce required administrative time;
• creating inventory management tool to reduce on hand quantities, improve purchasing accuracy, and support plant schedules; and
• implementing measurement of key indicators in production and quality to drive behavior and improvement initiatives.

2. Improvement in communication and decision making by

• communicating results and objectives to the plant staff through bi-weekly meetings;
• defining, capturing and reporting key performance indicators to decision makers on a weekly and monthly basis; and
• comparing all reports to actual performance to established targets. Communication at all levels is focused on opportunities to improve performance and exceed targets.

Improve management capability 
Management capability was improved upon through

• training management in process observations, lean manufacturing, active management, change management, and management operating system concepts;
• on-the-floor coaching in process observations and active management; and
• having plant supervisers identify variances, root causes, and implement solutions on a daily basis as a result of coaching and management system tools.