What's new?!

innovations production process

If you do a tour on the gemba (work floor) of the production area, you will see that they have been working hard here on innovations in the past year in order to optimize the production process. During a conversation with Peter Smits and Teun Biesheuvel, you are bound to feel enthusiastic about what they have achieved and how the entire team applies it on a daily basis. In the coming What's New, we will highlight some of these innovations. For now, Teun and Peter will tell you more about production planning/result goals and the 5S methodology of the work cabinets.

Production planning and result targets

The aim of improved production planning and insight into result goals is to reduce red time and thus work more efficiently. In order to achieve this, we first worked on improved production planning. When previously the work cards were distributed in the morning, the necessary raw materials and packaging still had to be collected. There was, therefore, a wait before we could start producing. The planning for the next day now takes place in the morning. Based on this daily schedule, the line manager classifies the production professionals and the required raw materials and packaging are prepared by internal logistics. In this way production can start immediately in the morning. So there is no longer any need to wait for materials (red time) before starting producing. Detailed planning makes it clear whether the day's deadline can be met within the scheduled time. Peter: “It is really nice to see that this production planning works well for the entire team. Production is running a lot better because of this. The next step is that the required raw materials are ready in the correct weight every morning. But that will come!”

The result targets are also clear to everyone and depend on the production lines. The goals are:
- increase reliability of planning
-  first time right for the quality of the product
- increase productivity

These goals are measured every day and completed on the appropriate poster made for this purpose. This allows everyone to see whether the goals are met on a daily basis and everyone is actively involved.

5S work cabinets

To see the real improvement in 5S of the work cabinets, you first need to know what the situation was like before this method was applied. Teun: “The cupboards were one big mess. Everything was mixed up, no one could find anything, so we wasted a lot of time searching.” Unfortunately there is no picture available of this situation, so we must take Teun's word for it, but it was evidently time to tackle this - urgently!

For this, the 5S method has been applied to all cabinets in production. The 5 S's stand for separating, structuring, cleaning, standardizing, sustaining and improving in Dutch (Scheiden, Structuren, Schoonmaken, Standaardiseren, Standhouden en verbeteren). By implementing the 5 steps of the 5S methodology, tidy and structured work cabinets have been created, so that work can be performed more efficiently.

The Kanban method has also been applied. In our production, this method ensures that raw materials and tools are in stock, so that no mistakes can be made.

Teun: “We have added Kanban cards between the raw materials and tools. If you come across this card when you take a raw material, for example, it means that this raw material must be ordered. The card is placed in a special order container, the order container is emptied once a day by the so-called milkman during his milking round. The milkman takes care of the ordering of the raw material and refills the cupboards.” This method has been implemented over the 6 production lines, so that everyone works with the same method. This means that all employees can be deployed across the 6 production lines. This ensures maximum flexibility and increased learning capacity. “The whole team sees the advantage of this method and, therefore, it works even better. This saves us 4 hours of search time per production line every day. That is 10% on 40 man-hours per day per production line. Less search time means more time to spend on production, which means that the product is ready earlier,” says Teun. This method is not only applied in production, it is also used in the marketing department, in the mailroom and the kitchen of the Bolidt Innovation Center.

If you would like to know more about these topics or if you have a customer who is interested in optimizing the production process, then Peter Smits will certainly be interested to hear from you! He can tell you or your customer everything about it.