“I’m used to building Formula 1 cars but making great tortillas is even harder. Using RS Production to identify improvement areas and track our efforts' results, we could reduce costs in record time and increase OEE by 10% throughout the factory. A clear target and empowering everyone’s role with facts was key in our achievement,” says Thomas Whittaker, Continuous Improvements Champion, Paulig UK
Paulig Group is a Finnish family-owned company that offers a wide range of food and beverage products. The company strongly focuses on sustainability and innovation and is committed to creating high-quality, tasty products.
Paulig UK manufactures tortillas under the brands Santa Maria, Poco Loco and some white-label brands supplying the UK, Nordics, and continental Europe with great tasting high-quality tortillas.
PROBLEM
Paulig UK needed to find a solution to meet their cost-out targets and to improve overall productivity. The factory identified four areas for improvement:
- waste,
- technical downtime,
- production downtime,
- and production utilisation.
To make objective decisions about addressing these issues, Paulig UK needed to collect and scrutinise data from machines and operators to identify the lowest-hanging improvement opportunities based on facts and not on personal opinions to ensure that the right changes were implemented effectively.
SOLUTION
Paulig UK used RS Production from Good Solutions to collect production facts, identify areas of improvement and verify the results of changes implemented every two weeks.
RS Production was combined with implementing several solutions, including redistributing the operators’ time, upskilling the workforce, and standardising processes through training.
The data generated by RS Production was the primary source for creating the business case and ensuring that the introduced changes produced the desired results.
RESULTS
The results of these efforts were significant. In the first 12 months after implementing these changes, Paulig UK reduced costs and increased factory-wide OEE by 10%.
The next step for Paulig UK is to continue to build on these successes with a “bottom-up” approach based on the knowledge of improvements possible in daily work.
Overall, the success of these efforts can be attributed to the clear target set by the company, making decisions on all levels based on facts, and understanding everyone’s role in achieving it.