Lean cuisine

Industrial Engineer, Jan 2009 by Cross, Candi S

It's a defining moment for a company when an employee discovers that only eight of 105 steps in a process create value in the eyes of customers. Who will be responsible for improvements? Where does the production line begin to eliminate wasteful activity? Must machines be stopped in order to make the necessary corrections safely and expethently? Have non-value-added steps negatively shaped the customers' opinions of their purchases from this company? In food and beverage industries, answers don't and actually shouldn't come easy. After all, one sloppy task or decision can result in serious damage to consumers and the downfall of a company's brand, profits and employee morale.

For Kahiki Foods Inc., a manufacturer of Asian-themed frozen foods for the retail market and the food services industry in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the eight steps between the process of bringing in raw materials to shipping finished product out the door would be perfected and protected; the remaining 97 steps would vanish with the help of the Milliken Performance System.

Kahiki's transformation started in May of 2005 because of expansion. Once the only Polynesian-themed restaurant in the early 1960s, it grew into a frozen food supplier with appetizers, egg rolls and a full line of entrees served in many homes. By 2005, Kahiki's 22,000-square-foot plant could not support production capacity. As Alan Hoover, president and CEO, stated, "Our old plant was bursting at the seams; we had limited capacity there. The new plant was designed to improve capacity. We were doing $15 million in sales at the old plant and felt the new one could get us to $75 million."

Relocating to a nearby 119,000-squarefoot facility to chum out $60 million more in sales may sound like a process improvement dream to most companies; however, the move brought a new host of challenges before progress could be realized. According to Hoover, within a few weeks of full activity in die new plant, machines weren't working and new drains weren't draining. There were condensation issues and ventilation issues, and although the main freezer could hold nearly eight times the pallets (2,700) than the old one (350) comprising a four-week supply of finished goods, shipments were running late and scheduled inventory mixed with wrong inventory.

"We had a Band-Aid approach to machine repairs. We were preaching about reliability and repeatability of machines but weren't stopping to fix problems. We had lots of micro-stops for clogs and jams that were hurting output," said Hoover.

What had happened to this food producer's dream of process improvement?

Unfortunately Kahiki's situation would get worse with the death of founder and president Michael Tsao. At that time, Hoover was the company's senior vice president of sales and marketing. He responded to this crucial time at Kahiki by educating managers on business improvement strategies lauded by authors James Womack, Daniel Jones, Jeffrey Liker and Eliyahu Goldratt. Learning about lean, machine flow and layout in the factory helped teams concentrate their efforts on making the new facility lean. People could be trained in these strategies, but the machines and cash flow still caused gaping holes in facility optimization. Two years passed.

Enter Milliken, a company that has achieved both the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance Total Productive Maintenance Excellence Award. Having just launched a new group called Milliken Performance Solutions to assist other companies in improving quality and safety, Milliken doubled its offering to Kahiki with the Milliken Performance System (MPS), a daily management system that goes beyond traditional lean and Six Sigma through a comprehensive approach targeting dramatic breakthroughs in cost reduction, higher morale, increased customer satisfaction and a cleaner, safer environment.

Craig Long, vice president of quality and Six Sigma at Milliken, says that the daily management system was created after taking 120 people to Japan to experience "the change." It took former plant managers more than three years to learn and implement before extending the service to customers. The fundamental goal of MPS is to change the culture of a company rather than offer "production tools." After experiencing so many challenges, Kahiki's employees could have been fatigued and resistant to more change, but Long says that beneficial changes were prompt and served as the incentive for employees to go further into the process.

"Seeing is believing!" said Long. "Models demonstrate very quickly what is required of each pillar and how effective the steps are. Quick results go a long way in people buying into transformation. As initial culture change is happening, people would say that they were working harder. There is a tendency to equate 'new and different' with 'harder.' After a short period of time, everyone begins to see a common-sense approach that eliminates the ineffective and inefficient elements that were part of their jobs. Operators recognize the elements of their jobs that are not productive and, if not solved, these wasteful elements are accepted as a normal part of the job expectations. With MPS pillar implementation, those expectations change. It is no longer expected diat things have to happen unexpectedly and generate frustration."