Situation

A packaging manufacturer has dozens of manufacturing plants across North America. Corporate leaders want to standardize performance and drive continuous improvement across all facilities.

Critical issue

The manufacturer competes in a highly competitive market that has slow or negative growth and razor-thin margins.

Reason

To be profitable, corporate leaders must optimize performance and quality and minimize waste and defects. To ensure customer satisfaction and thereby maximize sales, corporate leaders need to know that staff have identified and resolved problems immediately. They also need to ensure that the customer receives the same product, regardless which plant produced it.

Vision

Corporate leaders envisioned a real-time SPC Software data system that would standardize these functions and enable a common language throughout the organization. Such a system would empower staff at all levels with timely, actionable data so they could efficiently monitor plant and employee performance and drive continuous improvement.

Hertzler Systems provided

Hertzler Systems provided GainSeeker Suite, which was deployed across all facilities. The system has been in daily use for more than 20 years.

Results

Plants that use the knowledge provided through GainSeeker demonstrate notably higher performance levels than those that don’t. “Most of our plant managers and their direct reports use GainSeeker every day. It helps them make better decisions, and enables them to drive up performance, quality and profitability,” says a company quality engineer who regularly audits several of the facilities. “The language of the control chart and the real-time data in GainSeeker permeates our culture at all levels.” “Leaders who don’t embrace the tool are underperforming, and they’re being replaced,” he adds.

Please visit hertzler.com for other GainSeeker Suite case studies.

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