I’m a consultant in continuous innovation and improvement methods. My typical customers are in variety of industries including: mechanics, electronics, aerospace, telecommunication, services and when I’ve been asked to deploy the Lean method at Lactalis, I directly asked myself, what impact could have the “just in time” – which is the objective of Lean – in the food industry. Very fast, I realized that if there is one industry that should produce “just in time” it’s the one. Indeed the objective is of course to produce the best product in terms of quality but also with the best freshness. And it’s exactly the simplification and the reliability improvement of the production system that during the Lean deployment will permit to change from a push flow based on unreliable sell forecasts to a pull flow that only replaces what’s been consumed by the customers. Of course, this transformation cannot be done overnight and will not necessarily apply it to all the processes of the enterprise right away, but step by step the savings will provide the company with the competitive advantage that it needs to lead the market.
With Lean, time becomes the one common indicator for everything. All key process indicators are translated in minutes and seconds depending on the situation and for example instead of looking at how many products can be produced per minute, we will look at how fast the product can be made. The difference may seem minor and yet everything is here. If we know how much time is required to replace what’s been bought, we can, considering the process reliability, determine the minimum stock quantity so that we have sufficient time to replenish before the customer comes back to help himself like in a supermarket.
It is therefore understood that Lean is a serious project that requires everyone’s involvement and if we have only talked in this article about production processes, it is also true that Lean must consequently be deployed in the administrative departments to better off the work flow.
Lactalis is only at the beginning of this journey which objective is to transform every one and each into a ruthless waste hunter. Waste being: defects, overproduction, unnecessary transports, waiting, excessive inventory, under optimized motions and over complicated processes.