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Operational Excellence in manufacturing is not as obvious to reach as it seems. Manufacturing is complex (and food manufacturing even more so) as your efficiency is hidden under layers of complexity.
There is no use discussing lean, 6 Sigma, CI, Toyota and all the other fancy stuff (and we have all those programmes in our arsenal of weapons so don’t worry) until we have the basics right.
The Chasm OpEx approach fondly refers to it as the “pants first then your boots” approach.
The depth of the initial analysis we do when we first go to a food factory does a lot of heavy lifting and gives us real clarity on the operational challenges. We are nosey, we’ll ask lots of questions, we’ll sit and watch you work until we are clear on:
✅ What do we understand?
✅ Which data is real and which is financial make believe?
✅ How can we improve what you already have?
As a bit of context …
✅Failure to hit numbers in the factory is too often assumed to be an operational issue. Where a variance manifests itself, and the reason can’t be seen, that is where Chasm will bring in the analysis
✅On the people side it is roles, responsibilities disciplines and competency and all need close alignment with ops, HR and training. Put the systems in place, the roles to run the systems and then put the right people with the right competency and training to deliver the roles
….. There’s much more but whilst I still have your attention lets take a quick look at what we believe here at Chasm:
⭐Breaking a system into smaller parts and fixing them individually will not make the whole system better and many times will make it worse
⭐Planning & scheduling are the centre of the universe
⭐Getting your data right is an unavoidable journey to “good”, and operational excellence is not possible without the right dat. Get the basics right before and then we can do the fancy stuff
⭐‘Deliver the day’ with operations by hitting the plan, in the right sequence, the right quantity, to standard in terms of labour and material usage. Then we can talk about continuous improvement and operational excellence; Standard work, changeover reduction (SMED) 5S, Six Sigma and Lean can all be brought in
⭐Automate and upskill the core workforce for using that automation
⭐Refocus your outlook and what your operation `collectively starts to work towards.
Chasm bring the plan and the horsepower to your factory for for rapid deployment to create momentum and buy in across your whole manufacturing operation.
To support our values and approach Chasm is structured to deliver the journey to operational excellence as follows:
We work in 4 core divisions
Business Systems
A combination of humans, machinery, and equipment that works together to get the products out of the door. There are many systems we need to integrate that we build or install off-the-shelf
Factory Operations
The largest area of Chasm, this is all the processes that transform your materials and energy into goods to sell
People
On the people side it is roles, responsibility disciplines and competency and all need close alignment with Ops, HR & Training
Supply Chain and Logistics
This links heavily with the business systems. Generally, we find you have the systems and are not using them to full potential, or you don’t have the appropriate tools for the job
➕Continuous Improvement
Once you have the fundamentals in place to ‘deliver the day’ and a basic continuous operational structure, then we can add some operational excellence: Lean, 6 Sigma, Standard work, SMED etc