Case study: Manufacturing excellence in practice

From left: Members of the Focused Improvement Team Manjit Dhupar and Shannan Park

Until recently, manually moving 19 full wheelie bins of rejected bottles per shift was a common occurrence for a bottle filler technician at Tooheys. In addition, the technicians dealt with, on average, 14 bottle jam ups per shift, equating to 30 minutes of line downtime a day. Both of these challenges affected safety, quality and productivity on our high volume line “AB4” (stubbie line) and were attributed to one machine: the low fill bottle rejecter (pictured right). Once identified as a major constraint, a cross functional Focused Improvement Team put their heads together in an attempt to resolve the bottle rejecter issue. The team used the MEX (Manufacturing Excellence) process and techniques, and over three months achieved some outstanding, sustainable results: jam ups have been reduced from an average of seven to less than one per shift, and bins of waste glass have been reduced from an average of 10 to an average of five per shift.