Clients
Kellogg's
IMPROVEMENTS EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS AFTER KELLOGG’S EMBARKED ON ITS WCM JOURNEY. FERNANDO TEIXEIRA, KELLOGG’S MANUFACTURING DIRECTOR FOR MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA, AND PEDRO TORRES-RIVERO VALENOTTI, CCI ON-SITE PROJECT COORDINATOR, DESCRIBE THE PROCESS.
The world production leader for cereals, snacks and alternative food, Kellogg’s, had decided to implement K-Lean, the name for the global journey to implement world class manufacturing at all its plants in Latin America.
Headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, USA, Kellogg’s has a presence in 180 countries, with eight plants in Latin America; four of them in Mexico. In 2009 Kellogg’s had sales of $12.6 billion for flakes, cookies, cereal bars, breads,
waffles and alternative food.
Before embarking on the WCM journey, Kellogg’s defined several challenges: world economic changes; supporting consumers and clients; how the supply chain could be a facilitator and not an obstacle; developing people to manage the business in the future; and creating future results today.
After a meticulous selection process during 2008, Kellogg’s selected CCI to support K-Lean implementation at its Mexican plants in Queretaro, Linares, Toluca and Mexicali. The Linares, Toluca and Mexicali plants were targeted to receive training in Leading and Managing Change, Teamwork, Focused Improvement and 5S.
During the assessment phase the Queretaro plant was identified as ideal to convert plant capacity improvements quickly into product sales and cash flow. A 42-week plan was designed using additional CCI resources to expedite achieving incremental capacity, reducing downtime and waste.
Here, the Process and Packaging lines were selected as pilot sites. After a Loss and Waste Analysis, historical production volume data was evaluated to determine main breakdown causes. From this LWA, improvement projects were identified for execution during the next six months. A critical issue was using new teams to implement K-Lean and achieving improvement at the same time. Opportunities were identified for nonplanned shutdown, cleaning, fumigation and adjustments. Also, other opportunities that surfaced during project execution were added to the list. Each product requires a specific production equipment combination, especially at the Corn Combo line.
The fumigation procedure was unique to the overall plant and needed almost one shutdown day a month. Equipment cleaning procedures weren’t standardized – each operator followed his own procedure, while others didn’t know any procedure or time required to complete adjustments.
Another important matter was energy consumption (water and steam) which contributed to non-planned interruptions of steam supply and waste generation in the production process. Instability made it difficult to schedule set-up preparation and changeovers. These unpredictable events led to frustration in certain production and utility processes.