Speakers

Gripple

Becoming a world class manufacturer
Dean Battersby, Production Director

Winner: Best Small Company, Innovation Award winner
Highly Commended: Health & Safety Award

Lean manufacturing, multi-skilled teams, TPM and continuous improvement
Making effective use of automation
New product development: the early stage generation of ideas and concept development

Over the last five years Gripple has grown sales by 90%. On time delivery is over 97%, capacity has increased from 605,000 units per week to one million. The Sheffield-based company boasts that it operates as cost effectively as anywhere – including China.

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Kidde Products

Starting the lean journey
Matthew Bonney , General Manager
Gary Slater, Cell Manager

Winner: Health & Safety Award

Successfully starting the lean journey - critical first steps/actions
Continuous improvement and training
Creating a safety culture

Uncompromising standards in health and safety are typified by a continuous programme employing 6S rather than 5S, with S for safety swelling the S-count. A 28-strong workforce handles product design, development, manufacture, technical support and repairs.

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JohnsonDiversey

The improvement journey
Sean Madden , Manufacturing Manager
Neil Goddard , Site Operations Manager

Winner: Best Process Plant, Siemens Energy & Environment Award

Mission directed work teams
5S
Introducing annualised hours for greater flexibility
Continuous improvement
Environmental sustainability

Outperforms its rivals and its sector on a wide variety of measure – sourcing, planning, quality, environmental, safety, people and organisation. It has mastered SMED techniques to cut changeovers to a fraction and customer service is consistently at 99% or above.

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Barfoots of Botley

Delivering the mission
Julian Marks, Operations Director

Winner: Supply Chain Award
Highly Commended: Best Small Company

Successfully introducing mission directed work teams
Managing the supply chain to cope with demand fluctuations

Innovation, investment in robotics and the introduction of mission directed work teams have fed Barfoot’s surge in success. Its management of a seasonally dictated, demand driven supply chain, rules supreme, enabling a quality service level of 99.95%.

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Power Panels

The journey to excellence
David Fox , Chairman and Chief Executive

Winner: Barclays Factory of the Year 2008, Best Small Company 2008, Best Electronics & Electrical Plant 2008, Skills Development Award 2008

Deploying 6 Sigma
Training and development of the people – the key to success

During its year-long reign as Britain’s best factory, accolades for this plant have been heaped one upon the other? Now running its own training school to share the secrets of its success across the manufacturing community.

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Twinings

Organisational redesign
David Bailey , Plant Manager

Winner: Best Household & General Products Plant, Skills Development Award

Using the open social-technical systems approach to organisational re-design
TPM and OEE
Continuous flow manufacture
Skills development

An Open Socio-Technical System is at the heart of Twinings’ organisation re-design and people empowerment. It has grown volumes by 100% OEE is up 50%, customer complaints are down to .031 per million and on time, in full delivery has moved up to 97%.

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Plexus

Adding value
Hugh Boyd , Lean Sigma Champion

Winner: Judge’s Special Award
Highly Commended: Best Electronics & Electrical Plant

Introducing and using lean sigma
Adding customer value as a competitive weapon

Providing a direct route for its customers to increase their own profitability via a ‘focused factory’ concept in which production cells are configured, staffed and equipped for each new programme to meet the assembly level, technology, volume mix and materials strategy.

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Carl Zeiss

Low volume, high complexity: The challenges
Bob Taylor, Managing Director

Highly Commended: Judges’ Special Award

Introducing synchronised production flow to a low-volume high-complexity production environment
Reorganising the staff and the factory layout
Becoming lean across the enterprise

Lean manufacturing and extensive visualisation underpin a sharp focus on world class performance. An emphasis on quality issues, corrective action plans, current status and solution evaluations, which are discussed and actioned daily.

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Olympus KeyMed

Lead times and skills development
Steve Brown , Director of R&D

Winner: Most Improved Plant
Highly Commended: Skills Development Award

Using value stream mapping and pull systems to significantly reduce manufacturing lead-times
Employee skills development

Improvement runs through every part of the Southend site, exemplified by a commitment to training and skills development and a passion for progress in production. OKM has cut lead times from 35 days to five and combined that with a 99% delivery performance rate.

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Thorn Lighting

Becoming a world-class site
Terry Carmichael , Operations

Director Winner: Factory of the Year, Best Electronics & Electrical Plant , People Management Award
Highly Commended: Innovation Award

Simplifying the factory layout to improve process flow
Lean and six sigma
Hoshin planning
Kaizen breakthrough events

Has continuous improvement and innovation built into its DNA. Even in transition, it scored 98.3% on-time delivery and rates labour efficiency at 92%. It spells out its KPIs as SCOPE - Six Sigma quality, Cycle efficiency, On-time delivery, Productivity and Employee performance.

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