Ecolab, Inc. is a $5 million company that develops and markets products and services for the hospitality, foodservice, institutional, and industrial markets. The company provides cleaning, sanitizing, pest elimination, maintenance, and repair products, systems and services.
Considering the amount of logistics it has to do, Ecolab is bound to go into a strategy that will make them deliver quality products and services on time.
An article on Manufacturer features Ecolab going into Lean Six Sigma, specifically in its manufacturing and supply chain processes. In doing so, it hopes to get 1% of all supply chain employees qualified as Lean Six Sigma Black Belts and about 3% as Green Belts. Working on Lean Six Sigma and the metric called, Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), and ERP the following changes have been observed so far:
- There was a production-related project involving a bid to boost first-time batch acceptance with a goal of reducing the number of batch adjustments made by 20 percent by more closely metering the raw materials being introduced. All areas targeted exceeded the 20 percent level, and one plant saw an 80 percent reduction in batch adjustments.
- A bulk loading process in a particular plant was examined. The existing process required employees to walk several miles over the course of a day between waiting trucks and the mixing department and quality labs to ensure the trucks were ready to be dispatched.
- By coming up with a new way of approaching the mixing process, labor was freed up, unnecessary trips were reduced, and more than $200,000 in savings were achieved.
Source:
Manufacturer, “Ecolab, Eyes on Growth” with a link provided by iSixSigma
*Photo credit: MorgueFile.com
