Kaizen Events Save Company Nearly $300,000 Yearly

(BMGI: Amsterdam) --To ensure its team was maximizing the business' performance levels, Graphic Packaging International (GPI), a producer of packaging solutions with 15,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues over €13 billion ($18.3 billion), turned to Breakthrough Management Group International (BMGI) to develop and execute a lean program. BMGI is working with GPI to conduct kaizen events using BMGI's signature SCORE methodology. Three such events have so far resulted in hard cost savings of £175,000 ($290,000) per year.

The focus up until now has been on GPI's manufacturing facility in Bristol, which has an employee base of more than 200 and specializes in packaging solutions for the food and beverage industry. There, GPI's management team worked with BMGI consultants to identify the site's performance issues and then quantify and prioritize opportunities for improvement. The consultants worked with a team of cross-functional employees to implement lean principles, eliminating waste and variation, while ensuring improved customer satisfaction. 

 "BMGI helped us in three critical areas: we dramatically reduced waste and cost; we transformed the speed of our manufacturing processes; and ultimately we improved the experience we are able to offer our customers," says Jeff Goold, GPI's UK site and European manufacturing director. 

To run the kaizen events successfully, improvement teams were formed and trained under a structured methodology, SCORE—which stands for select-clarify-organize-run-and-evaluate—to maximize the return on lean improvement projects. During these events at the Bristol facility, GPI's machine operators highlighted key areas for improvement and signaled the beginning of a dramatic shift-change in the company culture. This, in turn, has profoundly affected the results achieved.

Results

The primary goals of this partnership were to improve upon on-time delivery to customers and to reduce operating costs by eliminating waste and improving product quality. Overall, GPI has saved £175,000 per year, representative of a three-to-one return on investment. The assignment has increased the manufacturers' production productivity by 90 percent, enabling better customer service and a significant reduction in overtime.

"By involving everyone in the process the results have become absolutely sustainable," says Kevin Brown, GPI's finishing area production manager. "Even in its infancy this exercise proved to be incredibly powerful. The willingness to move forward is remarkable and more beneficial than anything we have ever implemented before. Employees on the shop floor are now driving themselves and have adopted a proactive, can-do attitude."