CELEBRATING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
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Quintin Fletcher, Production Supervisor; Middlesboro, KY Facility Quintin faces challenges head on, takes ownership of his department and drives improvement across our Middlesboro, KY facility. During Quintin’s time as supervisor, he helped increase the pack room from a 74% T-Max to an average of 77%. T-Max is the theoretical maximum throughput that the combination of equipment on a line can achieve. He also took on a cost savings project with maintenance to monitor slicer performance resulting in $73,000 in savings. While executing these projects, Quintin also trained new employees and fully embraced the new orientation program to help reduce turnover. Mike Frady, Production Supervisor; Middlesboro, KY Facility With nearly 40 years of experience, Mike has become known as one of “the Greats.” His knowledge on smokehouse processes and various cook cycles of quality pork products is invaluable to our Middlesboro facility. Mike works closely with the Environmental Manager to decrease emissions across 15 smokehouses and leads the team responsible for maintaining the smoke scrubbers, which help keep plant emissions low. Mike initiated and oversaw hours of testing on a high-humidity smokehouse cycle project that saves the facility over $144,000 annually and reduced annual CO2 emissions by 1,251 tons! Mike is an environmental steward and has shown a loyal commitment to his work and continuous improvement. Our Operational Excellence Award finalists are employees who relentlessly seek new ways to do business better. These finalists follow our Four Pillars of Operational Excellence: reduce complexity; gain visibility; extreme ownership; and prioritize and execute. They also embrace our “People, Pigs and Plants” Operational Excellence strategy, which maximizes the potential of every team member; optimizes our raw material; and fully utilizes our facilities. CELEBRATING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
Transcript of CELEBRATING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
Quintin Fletcher, Production Supervisor; Middlesboro, KY Facility Quintin faces challenges head on, takes ownership of his department and drives improvement across our Middlesboro, KY facility. During Quintin’s time as supervisor, he helped increase the pack room from a 74% T-Max to an average of 77%. T-Max is the theoretical maximum throughput that the combination of equipment on a line can achieve. He also took on a cost savings project with maintenance to monitor slicer performance resulting in $73,000 in savings. While executing these projects, Quintin also trained new employees and fully embraced the new orientation program to help reduce turnover.
Mike Frady, Production Supervisor; Middlesboro, KY Facility
With nearly 40 years of experience, Mike has become known as one of “the Greats.” His knowledge on smokehouse processes and various cook cycles of quality pork products is invaluable to our Middlesboro facility. Mike works closely with the Environmental Manager to decrease emissions across 15 smokehouses and leads the team responsible for maintaining the smoke scrubbers, which help keep plant emissions low. Mike initiated and oversaw hours of testing on a high-humidity smokehouse cycle project that saves the facility over $144,000 annually and reduced annual CO2 emissions by 1,251 tons! Mike is an environmental steward and has shown a loyal commitment to his work and continuous improvement.
Our Operational Excellence Award finalists are employees who relentlessly seek new ways to do business better. These finalists follow our Four Pillars of Operational Excellence: reduce complexity; gain visibility; extreme ownership; and prioritize and execute. They also embrace our “People, Pigs and Plants” Operational Excellence strategy, which maximizes the potential of every team member; optimizes our raw material; and fully utilizes our facilities.
CELEBRATING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
Hog Production Transportation Team
This team introduced the ‘Pac Man’ Project in April 2019 to eliminate supply chain inefficiencies within hog production regions. They used GIS software to analyze farm locations and developed a supply chain allocation model. This model is now used on a weekly basis to fulfill plant and production demands and allows transportation to meet these demands in the most efficient way possible. It is estimated that this project will result in approximately $500,000 in savings, reduce travel by 307,506 miles and save 56,631 gallons of diesel fuel, which shrinks the carbon footprint of hog production animal haul by 18% on the East Coast. This project also helps us achieve our larger goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2025.
Clinton, NC Facility Team
Our Clinton, NC Team found a way to resolve issues with product loss and labor efficiency. With the help of Summit Manufacturing, Andrew and Terry designed a dividing wall in their scald tub. This dividing wall eliminated the labor efficiency issue of hogs being de-shackled and reduced product loss due to scalding while going through the de-hairing process. This project saved approximately 210 hogs a day from having to be discarded, which equates to a savings of around $386,240. It also maximized worker efficiency, resulting in a total cost savings of around $441,240. This solution exemplifies our ‘People, Pigs and Plants” Operational Excellence strategy.
Cudahy, WI Facility Team
This team generated an estimated $809,729 in annual savings by simplifying processes and eliminating downtime at our Cudahy, WI facility. The Cudahy Team identified multiple areas that needed improvement and created solutions by: establishing standard settings for the Weber slicer, PPI conveyors, paper length, and spacing of sheets as they travel to the stackers; changing the Multivac regulator size to allow for more gas flow; and addressing press run speed loss. Combined, these projects helped increased T-MAX from 77.4% in 2018 to 84.1% T-MAX in weeks 1-44 in 2019. T-Max is the theoretical maximum throughput that the combination of equipment on a line can achieve. These team members went above and beyond and truly exemplify our Four Pillars of operational excellence: reduce complexity; gain visibility; extreme ownership; and prioritize and execute.
Andrew Jordan Assistant Plant ManagerTerry Orness Plant Manager
Bob Conti Plant Maintenance SupervisorDave Curry Production SupervisorPhilip Rizzo SuperintendentLuis Saldivar Production SupervisorGreg Woods Plant Maintenance Superintendent
Andy James Regional Operations ManagerGarrett Melvin Business Development Analyst Chris Sykes Regional Operations Manager
Denison, IA Facility Team
Our Denison, IA Team worked with Rasmussen Air & Gas Energy (RAGE) to complete a comprehensive compressed air system upgrade. Our Denison, IA facility operates six air compressors to meet the compressed air requirements of the plant’s equipment. The plant has large swings in demand from shift to shift and the old network of compressed air equipment had a difficult time efficiently supplying the plant’s needs. This team worked with RAGE to gather data and create a system with new compressors, air treatment equipment, controls, and system storage upgrades. After completing installation, the average energy consumption is now 302.2 kW – a 197.8 kW reduction! Annually this will save 1,732,728 kWh of electricity and $121,290.96 of electric expense.
Lisle, IL Office Team
Our Lisle, IL Team simplified tax and payroll processes and improved accuracy. Their first initiative was shifting the processing of payroll tax payments from the ACH Debit payment method to the ACH Credit payment method. The ACH Credit process allows them to batch all their tax payments in one file and upload to the bank using a simple tax management software, decreasing the time spent from 20 hours/week to 10 min/day. This process also allows for streamlined automation and reduces paper printing by 95%. Their second initiative was implementing the batch process when filing tax reports. This process saves our tax team 19 hours/quarter by allowing them to consolidate their wage files and tax returns. Overall, this team was able to save their department over 1,500 hours of effort annually!
Scott Bantam Environmental ManagerRick Henry Plant EngineerRoger Nemitz PSM Coordinator
Dawn Flenker Tax and Accounting ManagerCarol Wang Tax AnalystFaith Williams Tax Analyst
