Baking&Snack - February 2012 - 52

HOSTESS BRANDS

Five S’s, plus a sixth

A recent 5S-inspired project shifted icing preparation (at left) to a location closer to its use point (at right) on the small cakes line.
Blane Sutton

Many techniques fit under the banner of Lean Manufacturing: benchmarking, best practices, just-in-time manufacturing, Six Sigma, 5S, statistical process control and visual factory, among others. The Lean Manufacturing strategy was developed first in Japan as part of a management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System. In Lean Manufacturing, the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer is considered wasteful and, thus, a target for elimination. 5S deals specifically with workplace management. The five “S” words in Japanese and their English equivalents are: seiri (sort, tidiness, organization), seiton (set in order, orderliness), seiso (shiny clean, cleanliness), seiketsu (standards) and shitsuke (sustaining discipline). Often a sixth “S” is added: safety. Damaged product wastes resources, too. The bakery put scales on all its waste dump containers. The department supervisor must enter his or her code whenever someone puts production waste into these dumps. A computer tracks the weights, and results are posted along with the rest of the department and overall bakery numbers.

“We put the 5S playbook together here. ”
Alex Peele, director of project engineering, Hostess Brands
Just-in-time is another principle of Lean Manufacturing, and Emporia adopted it wholeheartedly. “Lean Manufacturing teaches, ‘Don’t produce before it’s needed,’ ” Mr. Crook said. For a long time, the bakery kept its distribution area full to overflowing to try to stay ahead of orders. Mr. Crook remembered that one of the first times that Mr. Wandschnieder visited the bakery, he could hardly walk through the distribution area because it was so crowded with product. “That had to change,” Mr. Crook said. To de-clutter the distribution area, the bakery stored some products temporarily in a remote warehouse. But more timely production reduced the excess of product on the distribution floor, and soon the bakery didn’t need the remote storage any more. Now products baked at Emporia reach the customer and the consumer in much fresher condition, according to Mr. Crook.

Becoming an example
Emporia was a good place for these new initiatives to start because of its long-serving staff. Mr. Wilson had been the plant manager at Emporia during the 1980s. He returned to Emporia six years ago and now manages his corporate responsibilities from there. Mr. Crook, a 28-year member of the Emporia staff, was named plant manager. Ken Robinson, the bakery’s chief engineer, is another long-tenured member of the Emporia team. Hostess regularly brings plant managers from its 36 bakeries to Emporia. “Each of us has become a bit of a salesman, ‘selling’ the Lean Manufacturing and 5S techniques to our colleagues,” Mr. Peele said. “We put the 5S playbook together here.” The company now has started 5S at other facilities, and Mr. Wilson noted, “The benefits go to the bottom line — a very positive step for Hostess Brands.”

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/ Baking & Snack / February 2012

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Baking&Snack - February 2012

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