The results of a six-months’ work by experts from the Centre of Business Development Technologies of the SUSU School of Economics and Management on improving labour productivity at enterprises of the Chelyabinsk Region, as part of the national project "Labour Productivity and Employment Support", have been recognized to be successful.
Over the period of six months, a team of experts from the Centre of Business Development Technologies at the SUSU School of Economics and Management has been introducing lean production at two leading food industry enterprises in the Chelyabinsk Region.
In 2019, OOO “Chebarkulskaya ptitsa” and OAO “Khlebprom” became participants in the national project “Labour Productivity and Employment Support”; these companies entrusted the implementation of pilot projects that launched the development of their production systems to consultants of the Centre of Business Development Technologies: Iuliia Babanova, Anna Dolinskaia, Alexander Korolenko, and Alena Stepicheva.
The experts’ main task was not only to achieve targets for improving the labour productivity on sample flows of enterprises, but also to obtain the knowledge, best practices, and tools for implementing and replicating lean production. The experts helped to form the skills among employees for further independent work on continuous process improvement.
Over the course of the project, OOO “Chebarkulskaya ptitsa” introduced more than 50 improvements, including building a continuous flow, finalizing equipment, mechanizing part of the processes, moving equipment, and organizing workplaces for the main and auxiliary personnel using the 5C system, what significantly reduced the process time, eliminated unnecessary employee movements, and optimized inventory.
“OAO “Khlebprom” first paid attention to the organization of production flow, reducing batch size, and improving the organization of jobs and operations in the flow,” said Iulia Babanova, consultant of the Centre for Business Development Technologies.
According to the results of the six-month period, the enterprise managed to cut the process flow time by half and reduce the work in progress in the flow by 30%, while simultaneously increase the output per person per shift by 15%. All this was achieved thanks to the introduction of key lean manufacturing tools, which tirelessly prove their effectiveness for production and office operations.
“The Centre of Business Development Technologies is demonstrating the successful results of the work of its experts, and is ready to offer not only training in lean manufacturing at a specialized applied training complex—a factory of processes, but is also to help any company improve labour productivity and support on the path to continuous improvement,” noted consultant for the Centre of Business Development Technologies, Anna Dolinskaia.