Industry: Canned product manufacturing
Buyer Persona: Leaders from an Operations background e.g. COO, CEO, VP, AVP, Head of Operations.
Author: Sreedher Kadambi
Publish Date: 5 October, 2024
Introduction
The Canning company, in this case, specializes in manufacturing canned products. Its business has been growing exponentially, every year since its inception, driven by visionary leadership and total involvement of employees.
The company has been in the canned products manufacturing business for more than three decades. It operates six canning lines, running 24/7, seven days a week, throughout the year except on federal and state holidays.
We were referred to this company by someone in the CEO’s network. By applying Lean concepts, the cans-per-minute rate has improved by 30%. The credit for this achievement goes to visionary leadership and teamwork!
Lean tools and concepts provided the path for achieving continuous improvement.
The Story of the Canning Company
The Canning company, in this case, is a family-run business with over 40 years of experience in manufacturing canned meat products, for leading brands in the country. As the business continues to grow exponentially year after year, the company’s founders aspire to transform it into a professionally managed multinational organization.
The canning company is on a mission to become the world’s number-one canned product manufacturer. The company’s leadership is committed to ensuring that inefficiency does not increase with business growth.
In recent years, the company has diversified into other packaged products while maintaining its existing market leadership in canned products.
The Challenge – The current average cans per minute is significantly less than the installed capacity.
The company was facing a significant challenge: it was unable to achieve the rated capacity on its canning line.
The actual average number of cans per minute was only 60% of the installed capacity. Why? The reasons were classified into two categories:
- Unplanned downtime – It included major machine breakdowns, minor stoppages, lack of materials, line imbalances, and short staffing.
- Planned downtime – It included setup time and changeovers.
Another challenge was the lack of adequate and accurate data to drive day-to-day decisions and actions.
Why the Canning Company Chose SKIL Global over others
The CEO of the Canning Company learned about Sreedher Kadambi, Principal Consultant at Skil Global Business Solutions, through his network.
There were no other contenders for the job. The person in the CEO’s network, who referred Sreedher Kadambi, had known of his delivery capabilities from a previous Investment Banking assignment.
The Silver Lining
In 2017, the Canning Company invited Sreedher Kadambi to their facility. During this visit, Sreedher Kadambi, along with CANNING’s leadership team and front-line employees, planned a focused event to achieve the rated speed on the production line.
Together with the company’s leadership and crew, they analyzed historical data, carefully examined the reasons for unplanned downtime, and developed a plan to reach the desired efficiency.
The key idea was to predict and prevent issues rather than simply find and fix them. Critical questions were addressed to create a robust plan:
- Determination of the demand using the TAKT time concept and identifying the bottleneck.
- Planning for manpower.
- Planning for changeovers.
- Planning for material.
- Predicting failures using past data and preventing them from recurring.
The plan was put into action. On the day of the event, the canning line achieved 30% more production than the historical average while utilizing the same resources.
This event served as a “proof of concept” for Lean, marking an “aha” moment for the company that laid a significant foundation for further experimentation with Lean tools and concepts. There has been no looking back ever since.
The Results
The engagement has continued in a full-fledged manner since 2017. It is in its sixth year now, The CEO says:
“You have an amazing gift of encouraging and mentoring others to see what can be and then set in motion the action to achieve it!!!! Humbled you are part of our team!
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