The Senior Quality Manager for a multi-plant packaging company faced a problem: Harmonizing quality and productivity across all manufacturing plants in the company supply chain. The company was experiencing a significant performance gap between plants. Lower-performing facilities lagged best performers by as much as 20% on key indicators such as line speed and quality levels.
This gap made it hard for the Senior Quality Manager to support the company’s drive for a more flexible supply chain. “For our business, the demand ebbs and flows,” he said. “We need to be able to move products around from plant to plant to handle urgent orders. It was frustrating because we had disparate systems, making it hard to be flexible.”
It was challenging to meet customer delivery dates, and production and profitability were sub-optimized.
When he looked at the underlying causes for the difference in performance between the plants, the manager found that the poorer performing facilities used different quality software systems and lacked the infrastructure needed to be a truly data-driven facility. This was a moment of truth. “It was awful the way they had things set up. I don’t think you could set it (their legacy software) up differently than they did to make it any better. But it really wasn’t doing anything by collecting data.”
The manager had a different vision based on his years of experience using GainSeeker Suite at another division in the same corporation. “Because of my expertise, I was pulled in to help all those (other plants). I think that’s really what drove all of the expansion and the changes with the systems because they saw how much it worked for our other division and what we got out of it. When customers ask questions, we can quickly pull data and charts and show them.”
GainSeeker's deployment collects critical production quality data in real time. GainSeeker connects directly to digital equipment where possible, saving time and eliminating clerical errors. Operators see customized Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red alerts for various alarm conditions.
The color coding is designed to help the operators know exactly what to do. A green box around the chart tells them everything is fine and they should continue to run with no changes. However, if they get a yellow, red, or blue box around the chart, they know they have a problem. The three colors tell what action they need to take, and they must record what happened and what they did to fix it. The company believes recording this information is important and should tie it to the employee’s performance-sharing bonus.
Meanwhile, the Chief Information Officer was in an uncomfortable spot. Bringing six newly acquired plants under the corporate umbrella was going smoothly, but he saw at least one area, quality systems, that needed to change. And he knew it was not going to be a popular decision. The acquired division used two different quality software systems across the six plants, and they had little in common with the legacy facilities. For the CIO, multiple software systems meant multiple support contracts. Even more impactful, it meant maintaining knowledge to support three systems instead of one.
The CIO was also well aware of his Corporate Senior Quality Manager's successes at the legacy facilities using GainSeeker Suite. The Quality Manager was known for using the system over many years to consistently improve productivity and profitability. The CIO was confident the Quality Manager could easily extend GainSeeker access to the new facilities and decided to take the plunge, even in the face of pushback. “All in all,” he said, “When I add it all up between the profitability, the reduced cost of ownership, the improvements, the new division just needs to change.”
Initially, the plants did resist. As the Quality Manager said, “They went kicking and screaming.”
Not surprisingly, the resistance was founded on a lack of experience. Having never experienced GainSeeker Suite, the staff didn’t know what they were missing. The manager said, “Once we converted them, they were extremely happy with it. They began to say, ‘Oh, we didn’t know you could do those kinds of things.’ It took off from there once they began to see what it could do for them.”
Now, with all plants running under one quality system, the cost of ownership is reduced significantly. Moreover, with one system in place, the Quality Manager can harmonize quality across the corporation and more easily flex production to meet demand.
The company also uses customized dashboards to track weight and compare material use against specifications. If they run over the target specification, they give away material and add to their costs. By monitoring this closely, they can ensure they run as close to the target as possible without going under and failing compliance.
These capabilities have profoundly impacted the business, enabling increased responsiveness and better customer service. That, in turn, has impacted productivity. “We’re running 15-20% above nameplate capacity from the equipment manufacturers,” the manager explained. “This is because we can better understand our product and our processes. Without that better understanding, there is no way we could have increased our line speeds.”
For this business, plant capacity acts as a governor of revenue, so an increase in line speed translates into increased plant capacity and increased revenue.
The manager concludes, “GainSeeker has enabled me to make decisions much quicker around process capability with new products being developed and to do better analysis of what’s going on so that I can inform the business and make recommendations on improvements.”
Want to reduce the cost of quality and harmonize processes across your organization? Contact Hertzler Systems today and learn how GainSeeker and/or GS Premier can unify your quality system, just like in this case study. Discover how to increase production flexibility and turn your data into a competitive edge.
Want to reduce the cost of quality and harmonize processes across your organization? Contact Hertzler Systems today and learn how GainSeeker and/or GS Premier can unify your quality system, just like in this case study. Discover how to increase production flexibility and turn your data into a competitive edge.
Hertzler offers flexible deployment options to suit your specific requirements:
.png)
