Supermarket Perimeter - June 2019 - 62

DIVING INTO LINE DATA
TO HIT OPERATING GOALS
By Dan Malovany

Real-time data can allow facilities to monitor quality and ensure that product consistency is maintained
throughout the process.

RARELY DOES THE ROAD TO
EXCELLENCE TRAVEL ALONG
A STRAIGHT LINE. In addition to
the usual bends and curves, the
journey undoubtedly encounters occasional speed bumps,
unexpected roadblocks and even
a dead end that may change the
direction of everything that had
been mapped out.
John Anthony Orlando, president and chief executive officer
at Orlando Baking Co., understood that when the Clevelandbased bakery began its venture
to enhance its operations at its
62 - JUNE 2019

200,000-square-foot plant two
years ago.
Initially, the continuous
improvement program pushed
efficiency by monitoring key
performance indicators (KPIs)
on its nine specialty bread and
roll lines that crank out fresh and
frozen products for a host of local
and national customers. Instead of
using a paper trail, supervisors relied on tablets and smart phones to
compare scheduled production vs.
how much is produced per pound,
as well as waste, changeovers and
even unplanned downtime.

While it was tracking the proper metrics, the production team
just needed to do it differently to
get better results. For Orlando,
that meant putting the process
into overdrive.
"Before, we looked at performance by shift," he says. "Now
we're diving deeper down by the
hour. Prior to installing this system, if we had a bad day, it was
bad one altogether. That bad day
would keep on going and going.
Today, if we're having a bad hour,
we can turn it around and make a
bad day a good one."

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To execute that transition, the
bakery began daily huddles with
employees on all lines and every
shift to determine root causes of
problems and follow up on production issues, says Ken Stiffler,
director of operations who spearheaded the new initiative.
Then to create ownership on
the ﬂoor, supervisors posted
hourly performance indicators on
boards throughout the plant.
"We put them up in an area
where all the people on the line
can see how they are performing
that hour," Stiffler says. "It's like
going to any game, whether it's
baseball, football or basketball,
and not knowing the score. By
putting it up on the wall, everyone knows."
That awareness then sparked a
greater sense of urgency.
"By reporting it hour by hour
and having it in front of their faces, it allows them to react to the
situation and change the rest of
their day instead of just reporting
the news at the end of the day,"
Stiffler says.
And operators don't have to
read the exact number. They
know how the line is running by
noticing what color it is.
"There is something to be said
about using a red marker to write
a number on the board if they
are not meeting the goal," Stiffler
says. "And there is something
to be said about picking up that
green marker and writing that
you had a good hour when it
comes to less waste, food safety
or safety in general. That really
helps drive and motivate the
team as well."

Finding the zone
Overall, using KPIs to gauge
production is more complicated
than measuring how fast a line is
running.
"As you can imagine, there
are hundreds of performance

SOSLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY; NORTHWIND TECHNICAL SERVICES

OPERATIONS

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Supermarket Perimeter - June 2019

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