Beelgara Estates

Beelgara Estate is based in Griffith, NSW. Its business model involves contracting vine growers to produce grapes that will satisfy the market wine mix (several white and red varieties). They produce several Beelgara branded wines. They also contract process for other wine businesses. Beelgara take in the grape harvest for around 8 to 12 weeks from around February each year. This intake is processed through juice extraction processes, various additives are added and the juice is then stored. Beelgara has a storage capacity of 9m litres of wine. The packaging side of the business then pulls from this stored product for the remainder of the year. Packaging have three lines, one for premium wine bottling (65% of the wine) and the remainder is packaged in casks (cardboard packaging with an internal pouch).

Initial Observations

• TPS foundations not in place
• Scheduling done on perceived machine speed not actual
• No KPI tracking in place
• No pre shift meetings held
• No 5S in place
• No standardisation of processes in place

Objectives

• Reduce planned split shifts by 50% therefore reducing operating costs
• Introduce Foundation Lean tools in to premium bottling line

Actions

• Master schedule used to track tasks through the project
• Obtain accurate takt times per machine per wine specification to understand the slowest machine in the line
• Create a schedule calculator based on the data from the takt times analysis
• Pre shift meetings introduced at a standard time. Setup team meeting board
• 5S introduction in a model area to be rolled out across the facility at a future date
• KPI tracking to be introduced for people, safety, quality, delivery
• Introduce standardised work instruction sheets for product change over activity
• Introduce training matrix to pin point any training activity

Results

• Schedule calculator introduced allowing an increase line output by 19%
• New scheduling process allows 50% of split shifts to be removed, reducing operating costs by $5000 per week
• Start of shift meeting board implemented and shift team meetings held
• Work instruction sheets created for change over activity
• Training targeted and carried out using the training matrix and work instruction sheets
• Problem and countermeasure introduced to solve current production concerns
• Data gathered allowed KM&T to give advice about future expansion capacity solutions to achieve output increases of over 30% with the introduction of new machines in targeted areas

Client Testimonial
“The knowledge of efficiencies has given us the accuracy to schedule properly. Implementation – We always knew that we need to do training. However we did not know how to implement the training and set-up the material needed. KM&T made this activity possible.”

Wilhelm Vermeulen
Warehouse Logistics & Production Manager.