Who would have thought that Stoddarts, an Australian icon in manufacturing quality metal and stainless steel products for over 45 years, were not operating at optimum process efficiency?

You wouldn’t have thought so, given their impressive client list that includes some of the big names in food and leisure such as Hilton, Sheraton, McDonalds and Virgin. However, after understanding the ‘lean’ concept, which encourages taking a step back and analysing practices across the entire organisation, Stoddarts realised they could do better.

At the time they discovered lean, Stoddarts were facing challenges in product testing. Managing Director Bill Stoddart explains these problems were evidence of wider issues within Stoddarts.

“To me it was just a problem with our product testing, but after speaking to QMI we could see that it was actually our everyday practices that were the problem and were limiting the company significantly. It was at that point that we were introduced to Lean manufacturing,” Bill Stoddart said.

Lean manufacturing concepts focus on eliminating any non-value adding activities to create the best value for the customer. It does this by utilising key best practices to ensure manufacturing processes are operating at a high degree of efficiency to create that value for the customer. There has also been some success in applying lean to other processes within and organisation. QMI Solutions’ ProEdge program has helped numerous companies understand and implement the principles of lean manufacturing.

“We sent along some key people to ProEdge in early 2004 and it proved so valuable that we sent an additional 50 staff to complete the course. It was very useful getting staff passionate about solving issues across the organisation, and thereby giving us the drive and capacity to expand our products into international markets.”

“Apart from being a great team building exercise, ProEdge highlighted some startling things. We had always been conscious about using larger production runs to get costs down, when ProEdge demonstrated that the solution can be exactly the opposite. It was also surprising how low we rated across the best practices, while we know we needed to do some work, it was a wake-up call when we discovered we rated well below international standards.”

“While it was initially a shock – it was not a bad thing. It was good to benchmark ourselves against standards for the rest of the world and encouraged an enthusiasm to get back to work and make changes for the better. It all began with staff implementing lean practices within their own work areas, which was a good way to begin the lean transformation.”

“It was also important to balance the excitement that arose as a direct result of ProEdge. You leave the program with all these big ideas and brimming with enthusiasm, but it is important to temper that with realism and the best way to roll out lean within the organisation.”

With over 350 staff, and three workshops totalling over 21,000 square metres, Stoddarts challenge to become ‘leaner’ was formidable but not unachievable as Bill Stoddart describes, “Stoddarts consists of 350 employees across five divisions and we decided to begin a lean pilot project, beginning with 5S, throughout the area that manufactured refrigerated glass doors – the kind that are used to display goods in supermarkets or bottle shops.

“This area, spanning 1500 square metres, showed a marked improvement and it is just as important to upskill and involve the employees within the area. So far all areas within Stoddarts have implemented 5S or are in the process of doing so, and all are experiencing the benefits. However, we were warned by QMI that we must continue to work on sustaining it, otherwise you could end up returning to the same dysfunctional practices.

“ProEdge helped us take a fresh, new look at the business and challenge conventional wisdom. We, like many others I would imagine, tended to focus our business development efforts on products and markets and not on our processes. We have been successful manufacturers for 45 years so we know what we are doing, right. We now have a totally different view of the business than we had a year ago. ProEdge also helped invigorate staff and catch the attention of those that otherwise might not have been involved in such a major change process.”

With leaner processes in place, Stoddarts expects to increase productivity and its share of the marketplace. Far from making an inferior product, it was Stoddarts’ processes that needed attention and by optimising its processes, Stoddarts’ can get these products to market quicker and is more focused on customer satisfaction.