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Vol 31 - No 01 - February 2005 Branch news: North West Branch - Visit to H J Heinz A few weeks before Christmas, a group of members from the North-West Branch visited Europe’s largest food canning plant – H J Heinz at Kitt Green, Wigan. All of their canned products made in the UK are produced at this site. The site also has world-class laboratories and a pilot plant and makes all its own cans. The National Distribution Centre is also on the site. The production plant’s belief is that ‘To do the common thing uncommonly well brings success’. Our visit demonstrated that they do just that. The production statistics are mind-boggling – so let’s get some of them out of the way now: Seven lines (8oz - 92oz); 70+ varieties; 40-1020 cans/min; 36M dozen/year. Two lines (8oz & 16oz); 50+ varieties; 850 – 1200 cans/min; 23M dozen/year. Four lines (5oz – 28oz); 95+ varieties of soup plus two sizes of beans; 250 – 1100 cans/min; 29M dozen/year. Wet baby food in cans for Infant Feeding Division. (128gm & 163gm for babies 3-15 months); 46+ varieties; up to 875 cans/min; 6M dozen/year. Let’s face it, you just know that you can’t produce 16oz tins of soup at those sorts of speeds. The problem was, though, that we could see it happening in front of our eyes at a tad over 1000 cans a minute. You stand there estimating the rate as they come out of the canning machine and whizz past you – full and lidless - and you have to admit that the cans/min figure on the computer monitor appears to be right. But you still can’t believe it – and the machine had only started up less than a couple of minutes ago. Despite the high production rates, the high automation means that there are not that many operators around, giving a feel closer to a chemical plant than a highly buzzing shop floor. Meanwhile, 20M square metres (32,000 tonnes) of tinplate are turned into over 1 billion cans each year on site at an equally cracking pace – well, it would have to be wouldn’t it? The Purchasing function is also on site trying to time deliveries of potatoes from the local Lancashire plain, beans from America, dried tomatoes from Portugal and tin plate from China, to name but a few. All of this is happening whilst the production areas are planning to upgrade various pieces of large process kit. Do you fancy yourself as a planner? The challenge is continual improvement. Current performance includes inventory turns of 8.4 against an industry average of 5.7 and they boast world class performances in quality and product availability. After the factory tour, we were invited to put questions to senior site managers from production, quality and engineering. You might be forgiven for thinking that this would be a good note on which to finish the visit, and so it would have been except that we were now to visit the much newer National Distribution Centre – a short minibus ride away on the same site. The Centre receives product from the on site production plant and from other Heinz sites around the world. The whole of the receiving, putting into store, retrieving from store and despatching is fully automated. The only manual activity appeared to be some repackaging of stock into various special mixed packs for supermarket special promotions and a few other specialised services. Awe-inspiring statistics once more abound. The building can house 77,500 pallets, about 95% of which can be held in the high bay area (and they mean HIGH). I didn’t care to ask what the floor loading was. If the automated pallet picking system finds itself with a bit of time to spare, it will examine where the fast moving product has had to be stored when it arrived. If it is up at near the top or they are not the front pallets, it will do a bit of shunting around so that they will be quick to pick in busy periods. The system is currently budgeted for 87M cases per year. It is capable of 200 pallets per hour. The current record for despatches stands at 2.2M cases in one week. OK, so it’s fast, but how accurate is it? Logistics is currently running at over 99.6% right first time. I think it fair to say that the scale and speed of both the production and distribution facilities seriously impressed us. We were provided with excellent guides who were knowledgeable and interesting and, together with the managers, gave frank answers to our questions. They showed it to us, warts and all – but it was difficult to spot any warts. To the Heinz personnel who took so much trouble to meet our needs, make the visit so interesting, fed us and even gave us some samples to take home we say an enormous THANK YOU TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU. Norman Lees, FIOM Stimulating Business Excellence Related Topics:
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