MANUFACTURING LEAN
Getting lean right in a confectionery factory
Suzanne Callander lean manufacturing principles in a confectionery factory environment.
T 38 oday,
the confectionery industry is dealing with manifold operational challenges that can impact productivity,
the bottom line.
quality and Lean
manufacturing – which is
all about operational stability, reducing waste and getting the best value from every step in a process – can be an important tool to help organisations optimise production processes. However, there are several factors that make food and confectionery factories different from other factories and these differences can impact factory design and how lean manufacturing principles are applied. Differences include a need to comply with legislative requirements – such as GMP, HACCP, allergen and other food safety standards – which demands different standards of hygiene and food safety risk management for different stages of the process.
“In the confectionery industry, segmentation of processes is often necessary,” explains Timothy McLean, Managing Director at TXM Lean Solutions, a UK-based global consultancy that helps organisations to address operational challenges through the
Kennedy’s Confection May 2025
Seeing the entire flow For this reason, when developing a confectionery factory layout, it is important that teams are if it takes place in separate rooms. “Creating a is taking place in multiple rooms. It is worth investing in lots of windows so that operators can see from one room to another. This can also help communication,” advises Timothy. “Sometimes it can also make sense to combine two production areas under the same, higher, hygiene standard rather than to separate staff into two rooms. The extra cost of extending the gains of having people working in the same work area and able to support each other and move quickly from one process to another.” Timothy went on to highlight the importance
adoption of lean manufacturing principles. “Some processes, such as secondary packaging, can be performed in an open warehouse, while others need to be in high grade clean room environments. This can lead to factories being segregated into distinct rooms.”
of avoiding bottlenecks at the end of the process. “Often the last step in the process is the most labour intensive – for example packaging. It is important to try and level production across all processes. Having a big machine churning out huge volumes upstream is no good if the downstream processes cannot keep up. It is better to have the faster processes downstream to ‘pull’ production through from the upstream processes.”
Timothy also suggested looking at material
are involved in material handling, due to the sheer volume of products being moved around.” with long travel distances can also use up a lot of space. Therefore, consider a technique like wasted motion and transport that can then be eliminated.” Other tips include storing bulky items such as packaging close to the point of use and talk to your packaging supplier about delivering smaller quantities of packaging more frequently to help keep stocks down. “Best practice is to get daily deliveries of packaging delivered by a Kanban system,” says Timothy.
KennedysConfection.com
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