Sisters of lean do it for themselves at Grampian
Grampian Country Foods expects to make cost savings of around £180,000 a year as it rolls out a lean manufacturing programme designed to improve operational efficiencies over the next 12 months, initially across its 11 pig processing plants then to other sites.
Grampian’s lean manufacturing programme follows a pilot project carried out in partnership with the Red Meat Industry Forum (RMIF) at its Winsford plant. Here it selected a team of production staff to take on the concept of lean. By doing so, it identified a number of cost savings in one of its production lines.
Under the guidance of RMIF facilitator Kevin Bennett and supported by company training and continuous improvement (CI) manager John Stonely, four female workers - the ‘sisters of lean’ - concentrated on making improvements over a six-month period to a busy production line producing meat products for retail sale. The aim of the exercise was to train them to adopt lean manufacturing ideas: identifying inefficiencies and bad practices and develop methods for CI.
By collecting reliable data that gave an accurate picture of what was actually happening on the line, they were able to identify areas for improvement. For example, by taking more frequent measurements of the automatic cutting equipment, they were able to improve the quality, presentation and yield of the meat products.
“The exercise has given an excellent opportunity to re-focus and develop staff using lean principles methodology at our site,” said Stonely. The sisters of lean are now championing this technique in all other areas at the factory.
Describing plans to roll-out lean thinking to other plants, Grampian spokesman Alastair Cox said: “It will be an ongoing process, sharing best practice across the various parts of the business.” Cox suggested the meat sector had been slower to adopt lean manufacturing principles than other sectors, such as motor manufacture, because of the inherent production difficulties it posed. He cited the “disassembly” involved in meat processing rather than “assembly” with car manufacture, which also involved the handling of more consistent, precision-made parts.
The main problems with implementation of lean manufacture involved the cultural changes that were necessary and the need to get staff involved, he added. “It’s a process where you have to engage your people.” It was hoped that staff turnover would be reduced by getting operators more involved in the processes they worked on, he added.
With more labour intensive meat processing operations “the technology has not been there” in the past to automate and provide greater consistency, said Cox, but that was now changing. Grampian was investigating the use of more automation where it provided the improvements needed and the cost of investment could be justified, he added.
