A Shelf-Stable Juice Manufacturer Needed a Plant Turnaround to Improve OEE and High Associate Turnover

Client Context

• ~$700M North American beverage manufacturer in the self-stable juice segment was declining, and COVID accelerated the decline

Key Challenges

• Turnover was greater than 80%
• Less than 30% Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) across 3 production lines
• Yield loss issues due to equipment’s poor mechanical state

Approach & Key Success Factors

ARGO-EFESO supported the client in:

• Transformed maintenance planning and operations with a mix of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)
• Developed a critical asset-driven preventive schedule (PM)
• Tied staffing capabilities directly to plant needs
• Balanced critical spare parts levels, secured on-demand back-up equipment
• Built outside back-up services for staffing gaps and surge capacity for planned downtime maintenance activities
• Reinvented hiring process to compete with Amazon across the street by shifting process that took anywhere from 5-25 days, to a process that took 90 minutes to make offers while candidates are on site
• Provided basic supervisor LEAN training on the identification of waste and strategy to attack each loss in a collaborative team environment
• Executed 18 Blitz Kaizens across 3 production lines to improve material and packaging flow and staging, changes to shift start hand-offs, and drive pit crew-style changeover

Results

Filled 85 open jobs across 3 shift operations and maintained <10 openings for the last 18 months

25%

Improvement in hourly beverage throughput

10%

Reduction in costs per fluid ounce filled

40%

Reduction in mechanical downtime

30%

Extension of mean time between mechanical failures

OEE improvement of 20+ points within 6 months resulting in $4.8M of net EBIT gain

Using CREATIVITY over CAPITAL completed significant equipment improvement efforts while avoiding $8M in capital expense