Food Manufacturer Increases Production Capacity 30% in 3 Days

Within one week of process monitoring the MetaExpert™ was able to identify several exceptions in the production process in one of two plants studied including:

• 55% production capacity from underutilization of large-batch kettles and kitchen equipment used
• Too many products made per kitchen area resulting in varying cleaning downtimes between3-10 hours for product batch changes per respective kettle
• Production delays of 45-60 minutes due to foot traffic of overtasked operations staff
• Miscommunication between production, packaging, and administrative departments creating latencies

After both plants were studied the OpEx methods, tools, and goals were proposed by our MetaExpert™.

Staff and management were further coached, mentored, and advised per respective areas resulting in:

• Reduced foot traffic and further streamlining the kitchen processes specifically delegating tasks to the respective kitchen prep and batch mixing teams
• Added rolling racks from the prep areas to the batch kettles and mixing team to cut production delays
• Specified production areas for one product at most to eliminate the worst-case 10-hour cleaning and maintenance time per changed condiment batch
• Restructuring scheduling flow to best accommodate interdepartmental communication through Kaizen event identification