LEAN PROCESSES @ EARLEE PRODUCTS
Learning the recipe for streamlining food processing
While creating ingredients and processing food products for around 30 years, Earlee Products has partnered with leading food and beverage manufacturers across Australia, and the world, using technical expertise to solve challenges and identify new opportunities in the food innovation space.
The challenge
Earlee Products produces a wide range of food product lines for different customers, and Wet and Dry production are completely different processes which involve long and time-consuming changeovers. As such, the production lines are changed frequently throughout the day, which can cause disruption to workflow.
In an effort to streamline these processes Earlee enlisted ‘lean’ consulting company TXM Lean Solutions, who worked with the Earlee Products team for 16 months to implement people-centric process improvements based on lean thinking for their operation.
Employee buy-in was always going to be crucial for the success of the project, so the staff from all departments would need to be engaged.
The lean solution
Lean thinking is a methodology that can be applied to food processing by focusing staff on streamlining workflows in a manner that can deliver more value while eliminating waste.
TXM created a lean crash course program for every employee, which provided them with an understanding of lean and its benefits, and senior management undertook a week-long intensive lean masterclass. Every employee completed a 40-minute lean training session, while managers of all departments were brought together to demonstrate how they would contribute to the transformation.
According to Michael D’Allura – Commercial Manager at Earlee Products: TXM “were able to take our entire company on the lean journey”, with “sustainable and meaningful platforms for our team enabling a continuous improvement environment.”
Full Article (@ FoodProcessing,com.au):
