Real Foods
Company Profile
Real Foods is a Seattle manufacturer with 45 employees that specializes in salads and dry and canned soups. Their customers range from boutique supermarkets to large distribution warehouse stores.
Situation
Real Foods participated in the Lean for the Food Industry grant project, which encompassed food processors from four western states – Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. The mission of this grant was to introduce Lean into the Food Processing industry while, at the same time, training Hispanic workers on Lean to give them a path to more stable employment in manufacturing.
Solution
First, Impact Washington brought in cultural awareness training for Real Food’s management. The main goal of this four-hour training was to educate supervisors and managers on how to deal with cultural differences and language barriers. Once completed, basic Lean concepts were taught to the Spanish-speaking workforce by an ESL instructor, preparing them in their own language for the Lean training and implementation to come.
The third phase of the project was Principles of Lean with a live food simulation, which was conducted in English for all those participating in the upcoming Kaizen events.
Finally, kaizen events were conducted on several of Real Food’s product lines.
Results
On the Spinach bowtie line:
- 68% cycle time reduction
- 44% WIP inventory reduction
- 62.5% process throughput increase
- 65% floor space reduction
- 60% inventory turn increase
On the Salad line:
- 62% floor space reduction
- 27% shop floor queue reduction
- 57% non-value added work decrease
- 60% cycle time reduction
The average ROI per year for Real Foods has been around $300,000. And, after working with Impact Washington they were able to:
- Eliminate 6 production tables
- Remove 40 production vats
- Implement pull systems on all lines
- Pool prep and production lines to create continuous flow
