ABG: Consistently Adding Value-Dhananjay Chavan (Vgsom, IIT, Kharagpur)

After completion of HUL supply chain make executive training stints, I joined HUL’s Amli plant as a production executive in March 2017. During that time plant was under immense pressure to cut down business cost by in sourcing third parties volume. For that, we were supposed to De-bottleneck process and packing lines. Because I was already holding learning of overall equipment efficiency (OEE) improvement through changeover time reduction, packing line debottlenecking was assigned to me as a key project for that year. With my previous learning and usage of SMED (single minute exchange of die) tool available in WCM (world class manufacturing) I started working upon the changeover of one sachet cluster (a group of four sachet machines). After recording the steps and time required, removing non-value adding steps, rearranging (Combine, reduce, simplify) them, I reduced the changeover time from 240 min to 60 min (reduction by 75%). Also, this helped to improve manpower productivity by providing audio-visual indication indications and increasing tools for free activities. Wastage was also reduced by successfully by implementing a quality approved process of wash water collection and rework. After a successful demonstration of this on one cluster for around three weeks, this replicated horizontally throughout the plant. This helped in delivering an overall OEE improvement of 3.8-4.3 %. Learning was shared through global portals with other factories to benefit the whole category. Further, it was presented in personal care Kaizen competition where it won the championship. It was also examined and appreciated by Unilever South Asia ManEx (Manufacturing Excellence) director and external auditors of WCM.