‍The challenge: waste, hiding in plain sight 

The Gü team knew excessive waste was creating a gap in their PnL. They could see from the data that the problem was in giveaway, but measuring the true impact and pinpointing the exact cause was proving tricky. They were looking for the root cause of discrepancies of less than a gram, in products with multiple separate layers (biscuit, chocolate, ganache, etc.), created by various bits of production line equipment.

The Gü team had spent a while working on this problem before they reached out to us at Majaco. Their team had already delivered some waste reductions here and there, but they really wanted to reduce the waste bill by half. They decided a fresh approach was needed, with a methodology that would find clear, detailed answers in a complex system.

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“Over the years, if you can only reduce waste by a small quantity, but you need to reduce it by a hefty quantity, doing the same things the way you’ve always done won’t get results. We needed someone to come on-site and guide us through a journey and try different things.”
– Jag Khosa, Production Manager

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The first step was to work out exactly what was going on. We used an approach called split solving to pinpoint the exact cause of the excess weight in the finished product. The depositing equipment’s inconsistent performance meant the spread of weights in the final product was too big to just put less in the ramekins on average – doing so would risk delivering an underfilled product. Split solving helped us isolate and fix the root cause of the variability and then reduce the average weight safely, with no risk of underfilling.

We also knew we didn’t want to rip up the waste-saving work Gü’s team had already delivered. So we took the time to understand it and rather than start again, we helped the team build an iteration of the monitoring tool. This allowed them to take and sustain a big leap forward in process performance and ultimately waste reduction.

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This involved taking steps like:

• Helping Gü understand why the giveaway existed, how much of a problem (in £ terms) it truly was and why it couldn’t be solved by just reducing average fill
• Designing experiments to systematically test the reliability and performance of all parts of the machines depositing product into the ramekins
• Carrying out targeted changes to key assets on the line to improve giveaway performance
• Introducing more detailed data capture that allowed us to graphically present the variability in weight for each ramekin travelling down the line on a 10x4 tray
• Colour-coding the magnitude of the variation away from the target weight, and creating a one-page heat map to recommend fixes for specific patterns of failure (represented by different patterns)
• Setting up proper preventative maintenance checks – and introducing ways to check the integrity of seals and identify any leakage on all depositors. This prevented any underperformance from returning and driving back the waste
• Running a cost-benefit analysis on equipment maintenance and part replacements. Having a better understanding of which parts were critical made any investment case for expensive replacement parts easier to justify and expedite. It also highlighted which parts were sub-critical and could be run harder or for longer with no adverse impact on the PnL
• Moving record-keeping from paperwork to cloud solutions. This gave Gü a database they could analyse to spot trends, track performance over time and ensure sustainability

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“It’s not just about how Majaco delivers the project – it’s about how they educate and inspire other people. They’ve really turned lights on in my team to think about waste in a different way.”
– Tony Riley, Head of Operational Excellence

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The result: a huge cost saving and a roadmap for more

With their new system in full swing, the variability in Gü’s production lines dropped massively. The final reports showed a 50% reduction in giveaway and a very significant reduction in waste. 

That’s just the beginning though. By working closely with Gü’s experts, we’ve equipped them with a clear roadmap for extra improvements – as well as the knowledge and expertise to deliver them.