Fosters Efficiency Improvement

The Foster's Group is a brewing icon, It is responsible for such great brands such as Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught Pure Blonde and Crown Lager. The Yatala Plant located in Queensland is one Foster's largest production facilities. 330 employees are engaged at the site which produces Foster's own brands of beer, spirits and ready to drink mixed spirits.

Objectives

Due to the success of their products in the marketplace, Foster's Yatala wanted a targeted improvement activity to improve the efficiency of their spirit bottling Line. This had to be done with the full involvement of the cross functional employee team to ensure that the improvements were sustainable.

Foster’s partnered with KM&T to help the team deliver on these improvements using Lean tools. Efficiency improvements were to include:

• Increasing the speed of the bottling line
• Improving line availability through the reduction of unplanned downtime
• Improving quality metrics
• Ensuring all improvements were sustainable

Activities Undertaken

Through effective stakeholder engagement and full cross functional team involvement, improvement actions were identified and prioritised to provide a joint Master Schedule that ensured project adherence through a regular review structure.

Increasing the speed of the bottling line

• Conduct line speed increase trials
• Collate data & observation to implement improvement plans
• Establish new line speeds and set as standard
• Implement hourly & weekly performance tracking process

Improving line availability through the reduction of unplanned downtime

• Train and develop production staff in
• Quick Changeover Principles
• Develop standardised changeover procedures
• Apply set-up work balance activities & responsibilities
• Liaised with Maintenance to provide quick response procedures

Improving quality metricse

• Create & visualise quality check standards
• Conduct quality conformation audit
• Implement Process Work Stations to display quality, operating, housekeeping & safety standards

Ensuring all improvements were sustainable

• Quality & safety visual standards created
• Daily & Weekly audits
• Introduction of standardised work

Results

• Line speed increases of an average 7% across 5 main SKUs (products)
• Reduction in unplanned downtime resulting in an increased OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of 9.9%
• Implementation of Quality Assurance procedures through visual tools & standards.

Client Testimonial

"KM&T have been of great assistance in the development of the Foster’s Yatala site’s transition to a Continuous Improvement culture. Utilising Lean tools and with a clear focus on detailed, systematic, sustainable and logical planning processes they have assisted in both the transfer of knowledge and in the establishment of a performance based mindset that has resulted in significant measurable improvements to our overall efficiencies and quality metrics "

Noel Jago – General Manager Yatala