COSMETICS PACKAGING AND KITTING

Significant firepower and resources are dedicated in the consumer goods industry in order to increase throughput, reduce change over time and eliminate downtime on the plant floor. Industrial and Process Engineers, Lean and Continuous Improvement Specialists and Operations Leaders all play a role in designing equipment and processes that can generate the highest OEE.

While resources are plentiful during the formulation, compounding and fill operations, many times the packaging operation is left to be done by temporary labor. With less supervision than full time employees, and in many cases less trained, temps brought in by staffing agencies can have a negative impact on not only plant culture but on throughput.

Productiv has quantified the productivity benefits of bringing the same process engineering know-how to the hand packaging department. The following case study describes the situation that Productiv entered and how after 6 months, was able to increase throughput and reduce labor expense. And the client’s most valued benefit – the improved culture and working relationship between operators and temps in what was traditionally a strained working relationship.

• Conveyors & Single Piece Flow: while automation has proliferated throughout the production process, the shorter run nature of the packaging process has remained a hand work department. By utilizing variable speed conveyors under a single piece flow system, Productiv was able to reduce WIP and downtime by 65%. Compared to the traditional ‘table build’ method, using conveyors and assembly lines improves productivity while also improving quality.
• Risk Sharing: one downside of using temporary labor is the compensation model. Staffing agencies charge a mark-up betwen 35 – 50% and thus make more revenue and profit by placing more temps into the job. Contrast that with a ‘cost per unit’ model that Productiv uses. Productiv charges a fixed cost only for output. This puts the burden of efficient production on Productiv and eliminates OT and temp labor costs for clients. By putting this program in place, our client was able to budget their spend ahead of time and reduce labor variances in absorption.
• Gainsharing: there are many aspects of improving culture for the entry level workforce. Some are as basic as taking an interest in our employees – learning their names and helping them achieve their goals. While others are built into our process such as our weekly gainsharing program that compensates our workforce the same way we are paid – by output. Our workforce earns a gainsharing payout based on productivity and quality. By linking gainshare to productivity and quality, the client and our workforce both benefit financially by turning downtime into output.
• Servant Leadership: servant leadership puts the focus on the right people for productivity – the packers and line workers. Our managers are chosen based on their ability to serve their workers. We do this by removing barriers and making the work as easy as possible. We want our workforce to feel like they are going at a smooth, easy pace. A smooth pace will generate more output with higher quality than a line with a high run speed that the workforce can’t reasonably keep up with. By focusing on ergonomics, pace and operations, we bring together our single piece flow, gainshare and cost per unit models under servant leadership to make sure we capture all the benefits for our client.