The Manufacturer Magazine : Promoting best practice in Manufacturing

Kerry Foods, The leaner sausage

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : Skills and productivity
Published : April 2007

Communication and training are high on the agenda at Kerry Foods as it starts its lean journey. Robert Pols heard the details from Jim Sands and David Hinsley

They are, in a sense, what we eat. Food is the very serious business of the Tralee-based Kerry Group, which supplies over 10,000 food products to customers in more than 140 countries. Kerry Foods is the division that focuses on added-value food items, and its GB Brands business unit is concerned with supplying branded products to the UK market. The Kerry Foods site at Hyde in Cheshire is GB Brands’ largest manufacturing facility and produces Richmond and Wall’s sausages (the category leaders) as part of a range that also includes Bowyer’s and Porkinson sausages, Wall’s bacon and Matteson’s turkey rashers.

While some strategic functions are carried out on a broader corporate basis, the Hyde site has a high level of responsibility for its own development, and its management has recently drawn up a programme designed to take the operation to a world class level of performance and efficiency. “There may be nothing unusual about drawing up a five-year plan,” observed site operations manager Jim Sands, “but we’ve recently done so in a way that takes things somewhat further. We’ve built a number of milestones into the five-year period, and we’ve established a clear assignment of responsibility, accountability and budget requirements.”

The planning, he explained, was a rigorous exercise during which senior managers spent five weeks off-site and charted the future in great detail. “We were concerned with the commercial needs of the business and with our requirement to introduce automation and increase capacity. So we developed a very clear vision for Hyde, with a focus on four key elements: people, plant, process and product.”

In fact, when you have the country’s two leading brands of sausages, you don’t make changes to your range lightly. Much of the product development will therefore concern itself with improvement rather than new lines. Nutritional factors are already a significant consideration, with salt reduction an established priority. Plans for the site are influenced by the fact that the Cheshire facility dates from 1938. Keeping a long-occupied site up-to-date needs constant investment, and the current challenge is to adapt the environment to improve product flow and efficiency. As for process, there’s a determination to step up the level of automation, reduce manual procedures and increase capacity. “That will involve developing bespoke equipment,” said Sands.

“With the country’s two largest brands we have very large production runs, and the solutions we need are not readily available off the shelf.”

But much of the emphasis, he continued, is on people. “It may be a cliché, but our employees really are our most important asset. So we have a number of initiatives relating to development and training, communication reward and recognition, we must be world class in all aspects of our business, and we’ve restructured our management team to allow us to deliver our vision.”

There’s already a strong link with Tameside College, which supported a ‘Skills for Life’ programme that became a platform for introducing NVQ training. Now the attention is turning towards training in business improvement techniques.

“As part of our planning process, we benchmarked ourselves against best practice,” explained David Hinsley, operations manager with responsibility for introducing the initiative, “and it became clear that lean principles would oil the wheels on our journey to world class manufacturing. We sought advice from the Manufacturing Institute, and they carried out a two-day diagnosis for us, walking the factory to identify opportunities. Now we’ve started our lean programme with a pilot scheme, and we plan to move from there into other areas. We’re committed to following the journey through.”

Skinless sausage production was chosen as the pilot activity, since it’s a particularly self-contained area. So far, a value stream mapping exercise has been carried out and projects and project owners identified. Now a kaizen blitz is due to follow, along with the introduction of 5S. Single-minute exchange of dies and total productive maintenance will be added in due course.

Training in the use of lean tools will, of course, be essential as the techniques are implemented and spread. But equally vital is the winning of hearts and minds. “We fully realise the need to bring people with us,” said Hinsley. “Otherwise we won’t succeed. Our benchmarking taught us that where companies have failed with lean, it’s because their people haven’t been brought fully on board. So we’ve made sure that there has been full communication, with thorough briefings and intensive training for those involved in the pilot. What has been refreshing is the fact that the workforce is very keen to go lean, and there has been very little resistance.”

“We have a strong union relationship on the site,” added Sands, “and they are very knowledgeable about lean and are very supportive. There’s a clear understanding that it’s all about increasing efficiency and eliminating waste.

The willingness to be convinced is no doubt helped by the company’s belief that change must be sensitive to people, rather than imposed according to an inflexible timetable. “It’s important to ensure the tempo is right,” Hinsley remarked. “Not everyone can digest new information at the same rate, so we’re prepared to press the pause button when needed. Conversely, there can be a build-up of expectation, with people keen for the next stage to begin. So appropriate pacing is the key.”

This approach to timing may be judicious, but it’s certainly not tentative, and Sands showed no uncertainty about the eventual outcome. “We’ve set ourselves quite a challenge. We’ll benchmark ourselves against the best, and we’ll be the best. We went through a very detailed five-week planning process, and we’re now confident that our thorough preparation will allow us to deliver.”

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