A major global food corporation had a pet food plant that was struggling. It was only delivering 52% of its expected throughput, with almost half its capacity going unused.
The causes were a function of how the plant was running day to day. Changeovers took more time than they should have. Downtime was not managed. Operators were working with subpar training and standards.
We started by using an OEE analysis to locate the bottlenecks and rank the downtime causes. We found three primary levers: changeovers, mechanical failures, and startups. We used SMED on the changeovers to help them separate the tasks that stopped the machine from the ones that didn't, and stripping out tasks that didn't add value.
We then implemented the proposed changes as a pilot. We documented operations standards and gave the plant routines for training that previously were missing. SMED pulled double-duty here, both cutting changeover time and teaching the operators how to assess and improve their work.
Last, we helped them implement a plant audit process, KPI monitoring, and routine improvement cycles. And we co-wrote a playbook to help roll out the process to other sites.
The results were material - changeovers now take less than half the time they did, nearly 75% of the identified performance gap closed, and the engagement returned 7x its cost on an annualized basis.
SMED and the train-audit-assess cycle allowed us to simultaneously address the process work and develop the people. Nine operators walked away with 48 new skills between them, and a new people enablement process for continual improvement.