Using IT to drive Continuous Improvement

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1 Using IT to drive Continuous Improvement How Highland Spring Group used IT on the shop-floor to improve quality and reduce unit costs Organically growing the Kiosk We have invested heavily in the development of our Kiosks, and are immensely proud of what we have been able to achieve. We have a workforce who have all the information they need at their fingertips; enabling them to drive safety, quality and performance key components of a successful business. Les Montgomery, Chief Executive Highland Spring Group is the UK s biggest supplier of bottled water and owner of a number of well-known brands, including the UK s number one British brand, built up with care over its 32 year history. Producing in excess of 380 million litres of water per year on bottling lines running at up to 9 bottles per second, the business IT systems are a critical component in their approach to protecting their brands and increasing efficiency. The manufacturing challenges to the business include managing a wide range of bottle types, labels and case packaging without error. There is also a need to carefully monitor quality and hygiene and ensure full traceability of all product. Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Highland Spring Group s IT systems is the Kiosk, a shop-floor information system that has been developed over recent years. The Kiosk has impressed many people, with leading customers such as the supermarkets Tesco and Sainsbury s encouraging other suppliers to use the Kiosk as a benchmark for supplier IT systems. It has also paid for itself many times over. Background of an organic business The Highland Spring Group headquarters are based in the heart of the Ochil Hills in Blackford, Perthshire, Scotland. The business was founded in 1979 and remains under the same family ownership to this day. The Highland Spring brand is the No. 2 still brand in the UK and the No. 1 sparkling brand and total production across the Group was in excess of 380 million litres in The Highland Spring brand comes from 2,000 acres of organically accredited land in the beautiful Ochil Hills. A case study on Boeing, presented at a knowledge transfer conference in 2004, led the business to an idea to solve a persistent problem, out-of-date

2 The Kiosk system at Highland Spring is the only one like it that I have seen within drink and food factories in the U.K. It is an excellent system, which can be used quickly to obtain any information required related to the job at hand. I have regularly recommended that our other customers contact Highland Spring to have a look at this system so they can see how this could be of huge benefit to their manufacturing practices Phil Kennedy, KHS UK Service Engineer documentation on the shop floor. Like many businesses, there were a number of copies of Standard Operating Procedures and other paperwork in specific locations on the shop-floor. When something changed in a document, someone had to go around the entire shop floor to update the paperwork. Inevitably there were illicit copies that were not updated and on occasion led to errors in labelling, and hence waste. The systems they saw at Boeing gave Highland Spring the idea of putting the documents on a ruggedised computer terminal situated next to the production line. A project team was set up and together they developed a storyboard to define the design of the software. The software was The trial Kiosk implemented using the technologies used for the business intranet and a prototype unit procured. Shortly thereafter they rolled out the first Kiosk by the side of a packing machine. The initial interface design was very simple, with just two buttons driven by a touchscreen and keyboard. One button showed the production plan, which was designed to allow drill-down to documents detailing the Production Specification. The second button showed the Standard Operating Procedures for each product. As with any IT implementation, the project team had concerns about user acceptance, particularly since some of the operators had no previous experience with computers. The project team were careful to work with each operator on-the-job to ensure that they were fully comfortable with how the system worked. From September 2004, when the Kiosk went live, to March 2006, the project team measured system usage and refined the system based on the operator s feedback. Continuous Improvement Manager, Brian McNeill described how uptake was mixed at first, but that as new features were added and operators got used to the system, the benefits began to show, at least anecdotally. These were: Very positive results from staff survey and usage data Marked improvement in task completion Reduced overhead in maintenance and distribution of information Improvement in collation, analysis and presentation of information Better adherence to manufacturer s recommendations At this point the business was sufficiently confident of the benefits that they bought a further four Kiosks to complete one full production line, with an improved design and without the prototype s touchscreen, with the aim of quantifying the benefits to the business. The benefits were sufficiently compelling that by 2008 all machines had a kiosk and in 2010 the business recruited an additional developer to accelerate the implementation of new functionality. The Kiosk today The Kiosk has moved on from its early origins as a source for Standard Operating Procedures and is now seen as the shop-floor interface for all company systems. The key to this has been the development of a very simple and consistent user-interface. Brian McNeill described how the success of the system is because we have bespoked it to meet the exact needs of the operators. There might be half a dozen data sources, but it is consistent from a user perspective. There s no jumping from one bit to another bit to get related information. The main menu screen for the system is simply a set of buttons for each type of information the operator may need. From here an operator can navigate to the production plan and from there they can see the full bottling specification for each product, including details such as images of the labels to be 2

3 Many of the SOPs require that regular checks be undertaken. These include health and safety checks on machine guarding and quality checks on items such as use of the correct label, bottle code or packaging. These are driven by a task list for each machine. As tasks become due, their status is changed until the operator completes them. It records in the system both who completed the task and when. Being able to see results at the touch of a button is important when external audit bodies such as the BRC request evidence. A summary of Brian McNeill, Continuous Improvement Manager It s about driving out error Today s Kiosk used. The operator can then navigate to the Standard Operating Procedures for any product/machine. These include SOPs for machine operation, health and safety, hygiene, quality, line changeover and maintenance. Each SOP has images to show the operator what they need to do, videos to demonstrate more complex operations, and printed checklists to allow operators to work more easily away from the kiosk. task status and results can be seen by the line manager, enabling them to rapidly gain an overview of the state of the production line. This is an area where the business has seen major benefits since the values are validated upon entry. For example, if an out of tolerance bottle lid torque is entered, the system shows a bright red screen telling the operator to stop the line and resolve the problem (if the severity or risk is high). If this happens twice in a row 3

4 the system sends a warning to the line manager and Quality Assurance team. This approach has been instrumental in a 90% drop in quarantined product and hence in protecting Highland Spring Group s brands. The Kiosk has also been extended to allow the operators to report downtime on production machines, including the time taken to change-over a production line. In the early days, the business investigated linking the Kiosk to the SCADA control systems for the machines. This was found to be a complex integration, with limited benefits. It also led to decreasing ownership of issues by the operators. The current approach drives operators to report downtime, and then work on improvements as part of the continuous improvement process, thus increasing ownership. Driving Continuous Improvement The Kiosk has been integrated with Highland Spring s ERP system. The data from the ERP system, including such things as actual production volumes, is combined with data inputted from the kiosk to provide a comprehensive reporting system. This real-time reporting system allows the business management team to constantly monitor the status of the production lines, ensuring that all checks are The Kiosk has driven continuous improvement allowing an extra 3 million cases per year from the same production lines Bryan McCluskey, Group Technical & Procurement Director. within the business to identify opportunities for improvement and the root causes of issues. It is this ability to target continuous improvement activity on areas of the business identified by the data collected from the Kiosk that has provided the biggest payback. As a result of continuous improvement activity, Highland Spring Group has been able to increase its production capacity by three million cases using the same production lines, thereby reducing the unit costs of the product and negating the need to expand their production lines in the short term. carried out and allowing the team to check performance against its operating targets. Furthermore this initiative has proved to be a major benefit to the business in driving continuous improvement. The availability of detailed and realtime data on everything from quality checks to downtime to production has provided a valuable resource for the continuous improvement teams Of course, continuous improvement extends to the Kiosk itself. Group Technical and Procurement Director, Bryan McCluskey described how When we started there were only two buttons, and as we built it we added a button, then a button, then a button. The operators and managers provide a lot of ideas to drive the Kiosk into the future. When asked what he would advise others starting on this journey, Bryan responded, Really engage with your teams. These are the people who really understand what would help them do their jobs more effectively and who can make or break the system. Bespoke development isn t for everyone, but for us the results have been truly outstanding. 4

5 Key Messages: Really engage with your teams of users Make sure the user interface is simple and consistent Create a user interface that exactly meets user needs Start simple and build the system organically over time Collect usage data over time to drive the business case for expansion Bespoke development can deliver outstanding results About FutureSME FutureSME is an 8 million project funded by the EU s Framework 7 programme. Led by The University of Strathclyde, the consortium of 26 partners includes 13 manufacturing SMEs, research and development organisations as well as SME support agencies. The consortium represents a collaborative effort amongst eight European countries: Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK. If you would like to find out more about the FutureSME project, please visit or contact info@futuresme.eu If you would like to find out more about Highland Spring Group please visit their website at Igniting a movement amongst European SMEs towards creating a sustainable and globally competitive manufacturing community Our thanks to Highland Spring Group Ltd. for their help in developing this case study.