RedZone Team of the Year by Jared Stumpenhorst & Karen Yardley
Karen Yardley, Glenn White, Jared Stumpenhorst, Roman Kozak & Trish Carter
Did you hear? We won a major award! At this year’s Redzone Awards Show Crest Foods walked away with Team of the Year honors for the central region. Out of 800+ plants that utilize the Redzone production system, there were 60 that were identified as finalists in the central region of the United States, and out of that group we were recog- nized as the Team of the Year for 2021. What did we do to deserve this honor? Glad you asked! We identified a huge opportunity with changeovers on Line 70 and decided that we needed to make some changes to help improve our process. We put together a cross-departmental team and launched a Kaizen in an effort to focus our attention and energy on a sustainable improvement. The goal for the Kaizen was pretty simple at the start: Reduce a 3HA changeover by 50%. While we all agreed there was room for improvement, a 50% reduction is something that many did not think could be achieved when we started. HOWEVER, we are proud to say that we did! During the Kaizen event that was facilitated by Juarez Jackson from Redzone, we actually ended up seeing a reduction to 4 shifts (33% reduction) initially and then continued to refine our process further and have been able to reach the 3 shifts (50% reduction) goal! The exciting thing is that we know that there is even further that we can go! We now believe that 2 shifts is something that could be achievable and just a few months ago we collectively could not get our heads around a 3 shift changeover. Additionally, we saw that we were able to apply many of the process improvements from the 3HA to other cleaning levels and actually saw a 50% reduction in changeover time for our level 2A cleans (12 hours) and level 3 cleans (12 hours). While that all sounds pretty good, what does it actu- ally mean for us? For Line 70 alone this team was able to recover: • Level 3HA clean: 50% improvement
• Level 3 clean: 50% improvement 27,000 cs of additional revenue 7.5 shifts of additional capacity • TOTAL Improvement/Capacity Gain
129,600 cs of additional revenue 36 shifts of additional capacity • Level 2A clean: 50% improvement
55.5 shifts of additional capacity 3.7 weeks of 3 shift production
43,200 cs of additional revenue 12 shifts of additional capacity
Beyond the numbers, what was the most impressive thing about this team is the way that everyone came together across different departments and shifts to reach the goal. People developed a genuine appreciation for each and ev- ery team member’s role in a changeover. There was a level of trust that was built that enabled everyone to Keep Moving Forward . This was the mantra for the team and the reason that we are confident that we will sustain and build on these results on Line70 and throughout the rest of the operation!
October, November & December 2021 Crest Ink 3
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