Situation
Our consulting work was for a company that produces and provides blow moulds and change parts for bottles manufacturing and bottling industry. It’s a full service operation assisting clients from idea to project completion regarding the manufacture of custom personalization of moulds and parts for the bio-plastics and PET bottling industry. The company is a 100% Canadian owned and operated company, was established in 1988 and has been successfully over the years serving the bottling industry.
Requirements
Schroeder & Schroeder was commissioned to determine the operations optimization potential by:
- Pinpointing opportunities for profitability improvement
- Offering an external opinion on the organization’s efficiency and agility
- Training entrepreneurs (i.e., owner and management team) on the Value Creation Index (VCI) and on the Lean process improvement concept of “value”
- Creating awareness of the importance of continuous improvement
Challenges
The main challenges faced on this project included:
- There were, in some instances, resistance and hesitation in providing information.
- There were also instances were it was difficult to extract the information that was required due to resistance by some staff
Actions
After analyzing the project requirements our consultants addressed the challenges presented and performed the following actions to deliver results to the client:
- Conducted a Business Practice Analysis – used Lean methods including Value Stream Mapping and Ishikawa Diagramming, to identify challenges. A key performance factor audit and waste analysis was conducted to identify opportunities for improvement. Observations were also made during facility visits and connected to Value Creation variables (sales, raw materials and labour).
- Identified Challenges and Priorities – identified key issues related costs, delay, and quality. Translated key issues into two fundamental priorities: essential optimization projects and custom optimization projects.
- Identified Potential Gains – conducted a sensitivity analysis to identify potential gains with, and without, growth
- Established a Comprehensive Action Plan – defined a project management approach and created multiple project plans with individual activities and duties, timelines and impacts.
Results
Through this approach, Schroeder & Schroeder developed a comprehensive operations optimization plan with multiple projects and goals for the company, including:
- Fundamentals of Efficient Supervision in order to empower their workforce toward operational excellence.
- Workplace organization recommendations to improve daily organization.
- Performance dashboards, including select performance indicators and objectives.
- Forecasting, Planning and Scheduling of production workloads
- Definition of custom optimization projects such as an inventory management system.
Upon conclusion of the project, all key success factors had been achieved, and the client was highly satisfied with both the project deliverables and subsequently asked whether the team could be available for a more in depth discussion.