2016 CIP Annual Winners Announced!
The Crest Foods Continuous Improvement Program (CIP) successfully completed its 24th year on July 31, 2016. With 95 suggestions to choose from, the Suggestion Com- mittee had a tough task of choosing this year’s annual winners. Many suggestions have been implemented throughout the year, and some proved to be great suggestions and i- deas from our employees. Thank you to everyone who participated in the program this year! At the Year End Celebreation, we were happy to announce that this year’s Grand Prize Winner was Kenny Blomberg from the Machine Shop! His suggestion was to use a 1/2” UHMW (plastic) sheet under totes on the new NBE tipper conveyor to release drag when totes are pushed into the tipper. This suggestion was implemented as a short-term fix while we waited for the long-term fix to arrive. It turns out that we like Kenny’s sug- gestion much better, and it is still in use and keeps totes from bowing between the rollers. It was a great idea that kept our new production lines at the West Facility up and running! He received $1000.00 for his suggestion. Congratulations, and thank you!
Keith Smith, Maintenance A-Shift 1st Runner Up • $500.00
On final checkweighers cut the drive shaft in half and add a split collar to hold the shaft together. This will make it much easier to disassemble when a belt needs to be replaced and allow for it to be changed in 10-15 minutes versus taking 30 minutes or longer. This will reduce downtime and will make it more likely that these belts will be changed before a failure due to them being easier to change. Our plan for this fiscal year is for the main-
tenance department and machine shop to work together and do a trial of this concept and then working through getting other similar checkweighers modified. Denton Yocum is going to connect with Keith and thinks that we should have a prototype out in the plant by the end of October. Justin Miller, Maintenance C-Shift 2nd Runner Up • $250.00
On auger fillers we have a number of cone hoppers and agitators that cannot be paired together when we install tooling. As a result, there are times when tooling is put together and these two things are not a good fit. This ends up leading to taking the tooling back down and finding ones that match. More importantly though, if someone does not notice that they are not matching this could lead to a food safety issue if the agitator is making
contact with the cone hopper. Justin suggests taking inventory and evaluating all of our tooling for auger fillers and then labeling them so that you always know that you have a cone and agitator that match. This will save time during the set-up and possibly prevent a food safety incident. This should also help to ensure the correct agitator size which can improve weight control issues. Jared Stumpenhorst is working on identifying a resource that can go out and begin working on this suggestion. We expect for this to be able to be completed this fiscal year and will provide updates as we make progress. For most people this change will be relatively invisible but those people installing tooling it will make it very obvious whether we have the correct tooling paired together.
October, November & December 2016 Crest Ink 3
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