Golden Wonder improve manufacturing performance

Lanner Group, the UK based business improvement specialist, has provided a tailored package of skills development, field coaching, business simulation and programme management support to help Golden Wonder identify and capitalise on real benefits through teamwork.

Background

The snacks market in the UK is a large and highly competitive sector. With strong growth in the market, the company is committed to growing profitability and brand strength for the future. In this truly competitive arena – an impulse-buying market in the UK – customer service is key to maintaining competitive edge. Golden Wonder meets the challenges of this marketplace by having a strong commitment to excellence within its manufacturing base and by operating in close partnership with its customers and suppliers. 

Golden Wonder’s Scunthorpe plant produces a range of branded and own-brand products. The manufacturing processes, demand speed and accuracy from the plant and people. In this environment, a complex blend of people and technological skills are needed to maximise performance.

As a privately owned company, Golden Wonder decided a complete programme of performance improvement to maximise short and long-term financial performance at the site.

The company chose Lanner as a part of this programme, because of Lanner’s unique blend of business improvement consulting and technology. The objectives of the project were to rapidly improve line efficiencies, waste, plant reliability, plant capacity and team-working.

Structure of the Programme

The improvement programme was constructed to address certain short-term priorities, while also establishing a foundation for sustainable long-term improvement processes at the plant.

The tailored programme included the following key elements:

• Providing skills transfer in Change Agent training to key staff responsible for facilitating positive change, including use of problem solving techniques
• Rapidly defining a method to create a robust plant maintenance system that enabled both production and technical staff to contribute to the reliability of the process lines
• Coaching Golden Wonder’s local ‘Continuous Improvement Leader’ by providing experience-based vision and mentoring
• Modelling of key plant elements using Lanner’s business process simulation software (WITNESS), to identify opportunities for increased capacity and improved production control.

In order to ensure that the project was successful, both companies have worked together in close partnership. Golden Wonder’s professional knowledge and industry understanding ensured that the modelling and planning fulfilled the needs of the business.

Results

Since starting this results-based programme of change, Golden Wonder has seen an immediate impact in performance, including:

• Record efficiency levels in target production areas.
• Bottlenecks identified and resolved.
• Product changeovers reduced by 55%, leading to:
• Increased capacity and customer responsiveness
• Unit costs reduced in line with business targets
• Improved involvement and impact of multi-disciplinary focus teams.
• Teams able to solve problems using proven tools and techniques.

Further opportunities to increase such benefits are already being looked into at the site, including improvements in product configuration, methods for improving the start-up of capital projects and the rapid implementation of procedures to ensure that benefits are sustained.