Pisa Saint-Gobain – Inventory Reduction To Release Cash to Fund Growth

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The Pisa plant is one of Saint-Gobain Glass’s oldest glass manufacturing facilities. With a very broad product range the business carried large inventory of products of different colours, thicknesses, coatings and sizes (>1200 SKUs). The nature of the glass manufacturing process necessitates long campaign lengths to achieve stability. With manufacturing lead times greatly in excess of customer lead times the supply chain strategy was to stock against forecast. This required two large warehouses on site for plus satellite warehouses across Italy .
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The challenge was to find a way of dramatically reducing the inventory to provide space for the installation of a new coater and allow the sale of surplus land to pay for it. An across the board percentage inventory reduction was unlikely to succeed – previous stock reduction efforts had resulted in temporary reductions followed by unexpected stock outs and then a gradual drift back to high stocking levels.

  • Analysis of demand patterns and demand variability (by SKU family)
  • Data analysis to focus in on critical product families and value streams
  • Value Stream Mapping (VSM) project selection Kaizen event with team to identify high impact improvement projects
  • Implementation of new production planning rules and buffer stock levels based on runners/repeaters/specials
  • Warehouse layout redesigned
  • Loading operations simplified
  • Reduction in inventory levels by more than 20% without any adverse customer impact
  • Reduction in storage area by more than 30%
  • Validated savings of €600,000
  • Broad engagement of workforce in Lean Kaizen improvement processes

A longer version of this case study appeared  in UK Excellence Magazine

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FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnology – Driving Strategic Transformation with Lean Sigma

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FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnology have used Lean Sigma as the basis for driving strategic transformation. Learn more about the innovative approach they have used to take process excellence from ‘backroom to boardroom’ and adapt and tailor the Lean Sigma methods to suit different aspects of the business.

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Rapidly growing in a dynamic and emerging market, the business is founded on high quality R and D and flexible and responsive manufacturing.
The main focus of the FujiFilm transformation has been to shift the organization’s ‘mindset’ to that of a service business. This has required a shift from traditional large corporate manufacturing thinking into a highly innovative, agile, customer-centric approach.
Key strategic challenges essential to drive growth and increase profitability have been addressed.

  • Providing unique and tailored services for customers
  • driving increased productivity in all business activities
  • reducing lead times and increasing flexibility
  • ‘Size of the Prize’ analysis was carried out to identify priority focus areas for improvement
  • A new deployment vision and roadmap was developed strengthening the programme alignment with the business strategic objectives and required outcomes
  • Leadership involvement and engagement with the programme was deepened
  • Critically the programme scope was extended out beyond manufacturing to cover other strategically vital business activities e.g. R and D, QC, Engineering support, Sales and Operations Planning
  • To date over 40 Green Belts and 330 Yellow belts have been trained, and have completed improvement projects and Kaizen events
  • 5S and visual management has been rolled out across all key manufacturing and laboratory areas (including R and D)
  • Lean Daily Management processes have been introduced
  • Improvement activities have been undertaken tackling wide range of issues including reducing process cycle times, increasing QC productivity, increasing Right First Time, reducing losses and reducing equipment downtime
  • A new manufacturing structure and shift pattern implemented on time and on budget
  • Annualised hard benefit of >£1.8 million
  • Significant increase in productivity with 20% reduction in headcount
  • Record number of new product introductions into manufacturing with 60% reduction in new product introduction cycle time
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Elanco – Poultry Case Study

Case studies

See how we have helped clients across many sectors solve their business problems and deliver tangible benefits

Extracting information from noisy data combined with advanced Data Analytics have helped Elanco deliver value added services in their animal health business.

Read more about our success with Elanco and JMP here

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Analyze data collected from more than 500,000 chickens and recommend health-enhancing practices to poultry producers.

Process Insight Consulting works with Elanco Animal Health veterinarians at “demystifying data analysis” using JMP® statistical discovery software from SAS.

Elanco veterinarians and technical consultants uncover statistically significant links between various genetic, dietary and environmental factors affecting the health and development of chickens, then communicate analysis results to producers in an easy-to-understand format.

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