Innovative Biscuits

Disc 230 Project Phase 2

4/28/2014

Section 3:
Usaid Mandvia
Ziyad Sohail
Saad Khatri
Dawood Khalid
Muhammad Abdullah Sohail

Innovative Biscuits started its operations in Pakistan in 2004 and has grown rapidly thereafter in terms
of its customer reach and market penetration. The companys production facility is located at 23 KM,
Shiekh-u-pura Road, Lahore and has equipped itself with machinery imported from United Biscuits UK.
The company has strived hard to make itself a dominant player in the Pakistani biscuit market.
Our project focused on the implementation of lean manufacturing practices applied in the production
and storage plant in their production facility. The ultimate goal of lean manufacturing is to maximize
quality and customer satisfaction. Accordingly, the company got certified by ISO 9001, to bring its
quality to par with international standards. Specific ISO standards certified that metal detectors be
placed in assembly lines in order to detect pieces of biscuits that have a trace of metal in them and drop
them from the process. To maintain hygiene, certain procedures were incorporated in workers
behavior; wearing of hair nets in the production facility by workers and managers alike, door closing
practice, placement of liquid soap in the facility, and regular IPM (Insect Pest Management) practice was
implemented. Furthermore, a Quality Assurance (QA) lab has been set up, which tests not only the raw
materials for quality, but also the packaging and wrapping material. To maintain production quality,
Quality Assurance (QA) supervisors would monitor the assembly lines and workstations.
Lean manufacturing tends to achieve its objective through waste minimization, which involves making
the entire system more efficient. Firstly, there is an electrical/mechanical team that is available on call if
there is a breakdown in machinery. This is essential because it prevents the buildup of work in
processes, prevents workers from being idle. The estimated maximum time that a machine takes to be
fixed is forty minutes.
Furthermore, there is also maximum utilization of space. For example, in the production of the biscuit
Goodies, one part of the assembly line had to be declined. Since the belt was emerging from the
second floor, another assembly line, comprising of manual labor was set up directly beneath it, and both
lines were then sending their output to the same point in the assembly line. Another example of space
utilization was the placement of the storage facility directly adjacent the production facility. So as soon
as boxes of different biscuits were packed into cartons, they were moved to the storage facility in
minimal time. This is extremely advantageous because it not only leads to the reduction in dependency
on manual labor but also in time usage. In the storage facility itself, there are yellow marked lines
specifying the boundaries within which the cartons should be placed. These are marked according to
international standards and are done so to prevent inventory being spoiled by sunlight, seepage and
wall temperature.

In order to prevent malfunctions and defects, proper warning signals had been installed in the
production facility. For example, in case of a jam in the assembly line, an overhead red light would be
turned on and be accompanied with as siren. Similarly, in order for a constant temperature and pressure
to be maintained in the production process, meters are placed which are constantly monitored by the
production supervisor.
In the production of biscuits, there tends be a lot of wastage. Innovative has developed efficient systems
in minimizing production wastage. In the cutting process of the assembly line, if a biscuit is not in the
right shape, it is picked up and put back into the mixer, hence dough is reused. What has further refined
waste minimization is the process of accountability incorporated in the business. Each production plant
has one appointed production manager. It is their responsibility that waste in the process is minimized.
According to company standards, the days waste should not exceed 2% of production. This is kept in
check by weighing the days waste for each production plant. Furthermore, in the case of a machine
breakdown, a stoppage report has to be submitted to the General Manager explaining the causes and
effects of the breakdown and the rectifying steps taken. This keeps the waste to a minimum and also
ensures that not only the workers but also the managers are productive and efficient.
There are some instances of wastage that we felt could still be improved. One of them included the line
balancing of Goodies. Goodies is one of the companys major products and its line production system
had the following times as per our record:

Mixing: 6 minutes

Cutting: 6 minutes

Baking: 5 minutes

Cooling: 3 minutes

Packing: 10 minutes

Total: Around 30 minutes per batch

Because this product has a considerable production, the machine also needs to be checked regularly to
check for smooth running. Each checkup takes around 28-30 minutes to go over the machinery and this
completely halts the process. This meant that the production in those 30 minutes had to be completely
stopped. Not only this, 48 workers who are working on that assembly line are also idle. This means 1440
worker minutes are also wasted. If a dollar value is given to this idle time, it amounts to

*
(*the individual component breakdown is given in the Appendix 1)
Although this loss of almost 2.73 lakh is not of such a big concern to the management, there were still
aware of this. According to them it was incidental activity, work that doesnt add customer value, but is
necessary to maintain operations. However, we felt that this problem can be solved by retraining the
workers to perform other task so that the time wasted here could accommodate in some other
operation. Machine checkup could either be made faster or at a time when the workers are on the
break. This will automatically reduce the time of the resources lying idle. However the machine also has
to be stopped for resting. For that, the company has to make a complex optimization schedule of
workers and machinery to minimize the loss of resources and optimally plan the activities.
Another aspect we noticed was that there was a lot of time taken in the packaging time. It took around
10 minutes to pack, making the cycle time to be ten minutes. Although, like mentioned before, it was
impressive to note that the company was aware and following the concept of line balancing, however
we felt that the cycle time of 10 minutes was big enough and it could be further reduced to seven
minutes but running parallel stations for the last process (refer to the Appendix 2A to see the current
and the proposed line balancing system). This would improve the output rate by 42% which will be
beneficial for the company (again refer to the Appendix 2B).
Thus overall, Innovative biscuits is an impressive standing when it comes to operations management;
there process is smoothly aligned, their inventory is kept to the bare minimal of 2-3 days, there was
minimal wastage, and most of all, they were aware of the operations techniques that are of the
international standards. It was refreshing to see a company that followed the line balancing, lean
processes and just in time (JIT) inventory so religiously.

Appendix
Appendix 1

48 people are in the line

30 min is the idle time where the workers are free
On average the machine is checked 15 times in a months
Rs. 10/min is the amount of wage per min per worker on average
One batch has about 285 kg.
Rs.215 per kg

Appendix 2A

Current process

Proposed process

inventory

Mixing

Mixing

approve

approve

Cutting

Cutting

Baking

Baking

Cooling

Cooling

analyze

analyze

Quality Assurance
Packaging

Warehouse

Packaging

Packaging

warehouse

Appendix 2B

(
Where

12 hours of the day are worked

10 minutes was the cycle time before
7 minutes will be new cycle time