Case Studies

Manufacturing Optimization & Organizational Improvement

2 minute read

The Client

A global food and beverage manufacturer

The Challenge

The company operates a 400,000+ square foot condiment manufacturing facility. This plant is central to the organization’s operations but was experiencing numerous operational challenges.

Growth in recent years, coupled with new technology implementations, led to issues with productivity, efficiency, and employee retention. Because of this, the company identified the need for improved organizational design, food safety, asset care, and continuous improvement at the facility.

The Solution

The client turned to Catena for our knowledge and expertise in manufacturing optimization. We deployed an experienced team of consultants to the project, including a leader who has addressed similar situations for one of the largest privately held food and beverage manufacturers headquartered in the U.S.

The work was completed in two phases: the Design phase, which aligned the Catena and the client team on priorities for execution; and the Execution phase, in which we worked with the client’s internal resources to drive the project from a PMO perspective. The Execution phase included:

Organizational design improvement, which prioritized:

• Proper employee onboarding and training
• Effective communication across all levels of the plant
• Rightsizing the plant organization structure by placing the right people in the right roles
• Implementing a system to house training materials and standard operating procedures
• Ensuring the team had the knowledge to execute the onboarding and training program moving forward
• Optimized corporate goal communication cascaded down from corporate to associates on production lines

OPEX improvement, which prioritized:

• Improved shift communication from plant leadership to shift managers and line associates
• A daily management system that provided information and metrics for expectations on each line
• Standard work instructions outlining details such as how to operate equipment

Asset reliability improvement, which prioritized:

• Inventory of the parts at the plant, including evaluating and securing the spare parts needed to support equipment maintenance
• Creating or updating preventative maintenance instructions for equipment
• A reduction in the current knowledge gap

The Benefit

Overall, Catena’s work on the project yielded the following benefits:

1. A reduction in turnover due to the implementation of new onboarding and certification processes, a more robust learning management solution, and enhanced training materials.
2. A significant decrease in out-of-production (OOP) time following continuous improvement (CI) initiatives.
3. A noticeable trend of reduced unplanned downtime across affected production lines.
4. Improved accuracy, visibility, and management of spare parts inventory.

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