Some like it hot
Greg Harrison, group manufacturing director, Patak's
My first Christmas at Patak's was great. I actually had some time off, which was a pretty weird experience after a career spent in fresh and chilled manufacturing, which goes absolutely crazy at this time of year. When you are used to running a 24-7 operation, it's a culture shock moving somewhere that operates Monday to Friday - and the occasional Saturday. I remember calling my old colleagues when I was on holiday, just to rub it in!
Joking apart though, I wouldn't say that working in ambient is actually any easier. It's just different - less fraught maybe, but more complex, not least because we are supplying such a diverse customer base. Here at Leigh, which is the company's flagship site (it has three others in Cumbernauld, Bellshill and Dundee), we make ambient cooking sauces, pastes, chutneys, pickles and pappadums for retailers, caterers, manufacturers and up to 40 different export markets, and they all have different requirements, pack sizes, labels and packaging formats.
We're supplying product in 25kg buckets for some customers and 540g jars for others. Some want shelf-ready packaging, others don't. To complicate matters further, they all require tailored recipes. The Brits like their tikka masala really hot. The Canadians like it a little milder! This dramatically increases complexity.
I've been at Patak's for about 18 months now. I know it sounds corny, but it really is a great place to work because it still retains all the goods things associated with a family run business, but has also taken a very professional approach. It's a very friendly place to work - Meena (product development director) and Kirit (chairman) Pathak (they dropped the 'h' so the Brits could pronounce their name) are still heavily involved both in product development and sourcing, but they really do make everyone feel that they have a stake in the business. People on the shop floor give the marketing department ideas and there is a good working atmosphere. Staff turnover is 3% and absenteeism about 4%, which is good for this industry and this area as there is very low unemployment around here.
If the company wants people to learn new skills, it puts in the resources to do it properly: we've got three full time trainers. There is also the opportunity to move around. We've had people moving from the shop floor into finance or from supply chain to sales.
Wringing out the changes ...
As the site is only six years old and was purpose built, it was designed with efficiency in mind. If I disappeared for a week the place wouldn't fall apart - it can run without me. My job is more about fine tuning, continuous improvement and lean manufacturing - taking the business to the next level by wringing out those extra bits of efficiency and managing inventory so that we can meet customer demands without tying up too much working capital in stock.
Like every manager in this industry, trying to reduce the energy bill has suddenly moved way up my priority list, and teams of people are working across the business to identify savings. However, we've also been looking closely at the wage bill. When I arrived, I was able to save £500,000 through aligning the headcount with volumes and shift patterns, for example. However, this wasn't a case of my marching in and laying off scores of staff. It was mostly done through freezing recruitment and natural wastage.
This year, the focus will be on trying to reduce mechanical downtime through an even more detailed preventative maintenance system than we currently run. After that, we'll look at the KPI (key performance indicators) review system. We're one of those companies which collects an enormous amount of data and displays it on the factory wall without really utilising it and learning from it. There is so much more we could do with it.
We're also installing a new forecasting system that will automatically generate sales forecasts and will then be managed by exception. This will help with forecast accuracy, capacity planning and stock management. The big investment for next year, however, will be a new auto-palletiser. At the moment, we're manually building pallets. Automating this will create a significant cost saving as the process is pretty labour intensive at the moment.
Secret blends
As for what makes our sauces and other products special, the key is in the spice blending. This is where Meena and Kirit come into their own. They both travel extensively in India sourcing spices and finding inspiration for new products. The family owns the recipes so we never know exactly what spices and what proportions of spices are going into the products. It's highly secretive!
From a supply chain point of view, managing the raw materials also raises some interesting challenges. Take pappadums, which we import from India and fry here at Leigh. They are hand-rolled and laid out to dry on marble slabs before they are shipped over to the UK. You can't do that during the monsoon, so we have to buy up more stock ahead of the rainy season! Raw material prices are not hugely volatile and Kirit has long term relationships with growers out there. However, we have seen a hike in the price of vegetable oil as it's used more for biodiesel.
Talking through the process for making sauces, we begin by entering customer orders into our forecasting system. The planning department is then alerted that stock is required and a production plan is put together. This is then agreed by the production team. Shop orders are then raised along with a bill of material requirements for all the components. These are typically spices, starches and sugar, cream, yoghurt, almonds, coconut and so on. Ingredients for a 3t batch are added progressively in the same way as if you were cooking at home. The sauce is then tested for acidity, viscosity, moisture and so on, pumped into jars, metal detected, sealed and pasteurised by an in-line pasteuriser. They are then cooled, labelled, packed and collected by a third-party distributor who consolidates our stock at a shared user site nearby.
Instant Korma
I know it's a bit of a cliché, but what I like about this job is the diversity. One day you will be talking to the marketing team, another day you're talking about a capital project, and then you might be handling a personnel issue. Like most managers, I do spend more time than I would like at my desk, however. Admin can become a bit like a monster if it gets out of control, and it is important to make time to get on to the shop floor.
Professionally, I'm expected to deliver against a whole raft of KPIs, and that's a huge challenge, but nothing really keeps me awake at night - apart from my kids. The sleepless nights came when I worked in chilled food!
INTERVIEW BY ELAINE WATSON
FACTORY FACTS
Location: Patak's, Kiribati Way, Leigh, Lancs, WN7 5RS. Tel: 01942 267 000
Products: ambient Indian sauces, pastes, pickles, chutneys and pappadums
Size: 15,236m2
Operating hours: 24 hours, five days a week. Three shifts a day
Employees: 175 production staff; 320 across entire Leigh (head office) site
Output: 28M jars of sauce; 17M jars of pickles, chutneys and pastes; 2M catering jars and 2.5M pappadums a year
Customers: retail, foodservice, manufacturing, export
PERSONAL
Name: Greg Harrison
Age: 35
Career highlights: "I am probably most proud of when I set up Northern Foods' chilled ready meals site in Hull. It was originally a bakery and had to be completely re-organised for ready meals production. Everything had to be done from scratch, which was really challenging, but really rewarding as well."
Domestic: married to Toni-Anne (a former Asda buyer) with two children: Lottie (two and a half years) and Max (six months)
Outside work: Enjoys keeping fit, watching films and running around after Lottie and Max
