The UK food industry lacks value managers : Why?

Related tags Food industry Management Industry Uk

Sir, I have worked in the food industry for 20 years and now approach my final year of an MBA at Manchester Business School.

As my course project, I am proposing to focus on the adoption of lean practices in the food industry, with specific focus on the adoption of 'value stream' (VS) organisational structures.

Initially, I have searched though job adverts, Linkedin and talked to recruiters on the logic that if a company has these roles they at some point would have vacancies.

There are several engineering companies that have VS managers in the UK but very few food manufacturers appear to have this organisational set up. Companies that have it seem to be more engineering focused and young.

When I do a wider search there seem to be VS manager vacancies in the US and Holland with Mars but not in the UK. According to the job spec, a VS manager in the US falls within my definition. Nestlé has them too, but I can only see vacancies in Switzerland.

Why hasn't this been rolled out in the UK? Do any of your readers know why?

Is it the entrenched hierarchical structure that dominates much of UK industry and the low regard for food manufacturing? Are there a lack of skills and people to do this job? Have firms tried it and it failed?

Brian Mullan
Food industry student

1 comment

Value Managers

Posted by Lynne Hallworth, 23 June 2012 - 10:42 GMT

Many food companies, including the one I work for, put value stream management as part of the accountability of the continuous improvement team.

The CI managers across the supply chain work together to understand the value stream and how to reduce lead times, and reduce waste - in all it's forms.

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