Facing organizational changes in food production, how can you uphold lean practices for sustained success?

Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach focused on enhancing efficiency, quality, and customer value by eliminating waste and continuously improving processes. At its core, lean manufacturing emphasizes value from the customer's perspective, identifying activities that directly contribute to creating this value. By mapping the entire flow of materials and information needed to produce a product, known as the value stream, companies can identify and eliminate non-value-added activities. Lean principles promote ensuring a smooth, uninterrupted production process (flow) and adopting a pull-based system where production is based on actual customer demand rather than forecasts, thereby minimizing overproduction and excess inventory.

Le Lean, c’est tout simplement trouver des moyens de créer plus de valeur pour nos clients avec moins de ressources. En éliminant les gaspillages, ou « muda », dans notre processus de production, on peut rendre notre travail beaucoup plus fluide et efficace. L’amélioration continue est au cœur de cette méthode. Ça veut dire qu’on cherche constamment à perfectionner nos produits, nos services et nos façons de faire. Chaque petite amélioration compte! En tant qu’équipe, si nous adoptons ces principes, nous pouvons transformer notre usine ou espace de travail pour qu’elle soit plus efficace et que nos produits soient encore meilleurs. Et même quand l’organisation change, on reste sur la bonne voie.

Key Principle of Lean Manufacturing Are: 1. Value, 2. Value Stream, 3. Information Flow, 4. Pull (Reduce Over Production), 5. Perfection of process and Standardized Product Formulations Avoid Muda( Type of Waste):- Over production, Waiting, Unnecessary movement of products or materials, Extra Processing, Extract Motion of People, Defetcs, Learn Modern Technologies, 5S, Kaizen, Value Stram Mapping etc.

The most important thing in my view is to never forget the factory floor staff. Too often when there are organizational changes lower and middle management get very distracted, even if it is just having to attend training on the new structure and practises. Keeping the factory floor staff informed and engaged is vital to keep things things running smoothly during these times of chaos.

The most important aspect of Lean is identifying waste, such as production downtime or waste of labour, machines, and raw resources. At first, TPM or Kaizen should be implemented to develop the skills of people and personnel who will be monitoring waste and identifying extraordinary ways to reduce or eliminate it utilising functional competencies.

Optimize our production levels with sales forecasts and committed contracts to ensure a balance of incoming and purchased goods

It's crucial to prioritize a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence. Engaging and committing the leadership team to champion lean principles is essential. Keep track of food safety performance metrics and resolve gaps in implementation with data-gathering tools. Establish a culture of food safety by training employees in best practices and aligning the team regarding food safety. Utilize the five phases of Lean Six Sigma methodology to gain a competitive advantage in delivering higher-quality products or services more efficiently and cost-effectively. Implement 6S in manufacturing to integrate the 5S principles and safety. Additionally, maintain a culture of accountability and excellence in food safety.

Las empresas de alimentos enfrentan el desafío de equilibrar la producción masiva con la creciente demanda de variedad de productos. Esto profundiza el conflictos entre ventas y producción, ya que las ventas buscan cubrir la logística con lotes pequeños con diversidad de productos, mientras que las plantas se concibieron para producir masivo,mantener eficiencia y costos. La falta de gestión del conocimiento ( lo que no esta en el lazo de control) en setups y ajustes, no compartido, y en la cabeza de algunos colaboradores agrava la situación. Aquí es donde herramientas como machine learning, simulación y low code + IA como integradoras de conocimiento habilitan la innovación eficiente.

Clear Communication Methods: Ensure that everyone is informed about the changes and how lean practices will be implemented. Operation floor staff often receive the least information and even when they get updates or memos from the line leader, they may tend to ignore them.

Quando montar uma equipe Lean, busque sempre envolver diversas áreas relacionadas ao processo produtivo, como qualidade, desenvolvimento, manutenção e operação. Diferentes áreas podem oferecer diferentes contribuições para a resolução de um mesmo problema, possibilitando traçar planos de ação mais globais e eficientes, possibilitando um melhor desempenho.

Simply asking an opinion from the hands on team is the first step. Actively listening, understanding their perspectives, and actually empathizing with their concerns helps to build trust. Closing the gap actually takes action. Continuing the cycle is where the benefits start to build. Discontinuing any of the steps or not fostering a team environment ruins any gains. Trust once broken is harder to earn back.

Automate all you like, but people remain at the heart of your manufacturing processes. You have to share a vision, you have to share the future state. But you have to plot a careful journey to get there and involve teams on planning for and executing the journey.

Lean can never be achieved without empowering and involving the employees. The management may set ambitious goals, and throw away sessions but unless the people on the shop floor get involved things aren't gonna move. Challengingly not all the people in the shop floor are skilled and can be brought in line with the targets. For them doing things differently from what they were doing will seem like an added task or Manager's way of showing authority over them. So it's very important to make them understand the results, and sometimes it's better to start with lean practices which will make the employees work simpler and Easier thus attracting their involvement, and then progressing from there on..

To boost employee involvement in this situation, select a team of lean managers who are best in resource management. These selected professionals should be trained adequately to carry out the job. Their job should be clearly explained to them for effectiveness. More so, they should be allowed to bring in the ideas they have regarding lean manufacturing. This will open rooms for a broader look at lean practices and how best to implement them to gain more by investing less resources.

A prática LEAN sugere que cada processo seja constantemente avaliado em um processo de melhoria contínua, sempre procurando a redução de processos e recursos, evitando o desperdício de qualquer natureza. Essa característica se encaixa perfeitamente na questão colocada, de adaptação as novas tecnologias e mudanças organizacionais, pois as mudanças, para melhor, são inerentes ao LEAN que já atua na constante procura por otimizações de processo. Dessa forma, a adaptação de processos nessa situação acaba sendo algo normal e de pertencimento das equipes de produção e manter as práticas LEAN para o sucesso sustentado será bastante factível sem grandes adaptações.

Apart from reviewing and adjusting processes to eliminate wastes, ensuring first time quality is key to lean manufacturing. You must produce the right quality of products the first time, ensuring no defects that will lead to rework or wastes especially microbiological defects. Hence First Time Right should be a key KPI for production by Quality Assurance.

One thing that I have found helpful in customer feedback is consumer / customer complaints of the products. You determine your success by the percentage of consumer complaints received. Of course, the lesser the better. However, this will give adequate information on the areas to improve and streamline or to sustain. Some times it is packaging and not really the content. Either way it could lead to wastage.Consumer complaints KPI is a good heads up for lean manufacturing.

Time wise there is always room to optimize protocols and process in terms of time for each step and in occasions the number of steps can be optimized too.

Organizational changes are usually carried out by the leadership of the organization. It is therefore imperative that planning is done appropriately in terms of resources needed and the ones to be streamlined to ensure lean production. This involves material and human resources. For instance, just-in-time inventory by supply chain, reduction of rework / waste by production and replacing imported raw materials with local equivalents, etc.