Packaging Manufacturer Increases Throughput, Reduces Cost Per Unit with EASE

Overview

Berry Global switched from Safety Reports to EASE over struggles with generic checklists and lack of accountability around completing plant floor inspections. After implementing EASE for layered process audits, the company’s Muscatine, Iowa, site increased throughput by roughly 20% and cut buyback costs roughly by half, while also increasing accountability to create a stronger quality and safety culture.

Background

Berry Global is a rigid and flexible plastic manufacturer with over 250 plants worldwide. Their Muscatine site manufactures five-gallon buckets and lids, including food-grade containers. The plant emphasizes 5S audits as part of its overall quality and safety culture, recognizing that a clean and safe work environment is a strong predictor of performance.

Generic Checklists Block Improvement Efforts

Before switching to EASE, Berry Global used Safety Reports software to manage its 5S inspections. This approach, however, had serious drawbacks that stood in the way of quality and safety goals.

“From a user standpoint, Safety Reports didn’t meet what we were looking for,” says Rick Lindquist, the plant’s EHS and Continuous Improvement Manager. “We didn’t have access to make or edit our own inspection reports.”

What the manufacturer wanted was to tailor 5S inspection checklists to each machine, something that couldn’t be done with the static, generic checklists in Safety Reports. In addition, there was no accountability around getting inspections completed, meaning the company had no data to work from to make improvements.

Another issue was corrective action. These would be logged in a separate system, which would send an email to the assignee later in the day, often when workers were already home.

“You’d get to work and see that the corrective action was sent at 11 p.m. the night before,” Lindquist says. “At that point, you’re already a day behind in fixing the problem.”

Recognizing that existing tools weren’t getting the job done, leadership tasked Lindquist’s team with finding a new solution. Choosing EASE, as it turned out, would transform their entire approach to plant floor inspections.

Rolling Out a New Approach to 5S Audits

Usability was the primary factor in Berry Global’s decision to make the switch to EASE from Safety Reports. With EASE, Lindquist’s team was able to load their own documents and quickly start creating customized 5S checklists for different areas within the plant.

“You just click a button and start adding your questions,” Lindquist says. “It was super easy.”

During the implementation process, their trainer suggested they consider a layered process audit approach to their 5S inspections. With layered process audits, multiple levels of management perform daily plant floor checks, providing more eyes on the process to catch problems—and more data to drive continuous improvement.

“It made sense for us because we have so many departments,” says Lindquist. “Everybody saw the value, especially from an accountability standpoint.”

Lindquist had a team of 13 people undergo training with EASE before deploying the software across the entire plant. Under the new layered process audit program, supervisors are expected to complete frontline leader checklists daily to ensure work areas meet expectations in terms of 5S and safety.

“As soon as we showed them how easy it was, it was like, ‘Bam!’” he says. “Everyone was out there on the plant floor doing audits and running through the process.”

In terms of their implementation experience with EASE, Lindquist says the level of support provided by their trainer stood out compared with their experience during past software implementations.

“Anytime we emailed him with a question, he was on it within minutes. EASE is very responsive, which is something we really like.”

Driving Down Quality Costs with Layered Process Audits

Since implementing EASE layered process audits, Berry Global has seen fewer mistakes in its production processes, which has translated to higher productivity and lower return costs.

Lindquist estimates buyback costs have gone down by nearly 50% compared to the previous year, something he attributes to increased discipline and accountability around process adherence that consistent audits enforce.

“The process improvement has been huge,” he says, adding that processes are working better because employees know that people are inspecting their areas. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in resin production.”

Before EASE, the plant was processing 60,000-70,000 pounds of resin daily; now, it’s processing 70,000-90,000 pounds per day during peak production periods. This ability to process more resin correlates to more product being shipped, with on-time delivery now close to 100%.

Auditing their processes daily meant that, in the beginning, they were catching one or two mistakes every week. That number has gone down to roughly one mistake every two weeks as a result of having completed 1,500 audits in just nine months.

Lindquist says daily audits and reporting demonstrate that the EASE system is working, and that they use the data when presenting their facility improvement plans to corporate.

“You can see the trend lines as they go up,” says Lindquist, adding that the software has been instrumental in spotting trends. “We can show them that the team did 100% of their frontline leader checks for things like housekeeping, 5S and distracted behavior, and it’s amazing.”

Improving the Corrective Action Process

Using EASE, the Berry team has been able to implement a closed-loop process for managing audit findings, which Lindquist expects will have several downstream impacts. By correcting problems found during frequent machine inspections, he says, they expect to see less machine downtime along with increased machine efficiency metrics.

The plant is broken down into different zones, each with its own zone champion who’s accountable for their area. Supervisors may delegate corrective action tasks to employees, or direct larger problems to a manager for additional support.

“You can go out onto the plant floor, answer a set of yes-or-no questions and immediately assign any corrective actions,” says Lindquist. “Once you close those out, you’re done. It’s great for accountability.”

Using EASE has also eliminated delays in the corrective action process—a major problem with their previous solution.

“Now you get an email right away when there’s a correction issued,” says Lindquist. He adds that his team also issues corrective actions as a form of reinforcement to tell people when they did a good job or had no deficiencies in their audit.

Positive Impact on Quality and Safety Culture

Lindquist notes that it’s not just production numbers that have improved since adopting layered process audits. It’s also helped them strengthen their quality and safety culture, which is a top priority for Lindquist in his role as continuous improvement manager.

“Even though we have a no-blame policy, supervisors know we hold them accountable for paying attention to the details,” he says. “EASE helps us get to the root cause so we can strengthen our team.”

One way the system does that is by allowing users to upload photos to corrective actions. From there, his team will go in and link action items such as improving standards or putting out one-point lessons to reinforce training on the plant floor.

Moving forward, Lindquist’s plant also plans to utilize EASE to manage their Safe Quality Food (SQF) inspections as part of their food safety qualification audit process.

For Lindquist, the team’s success with EASE all comes down to the ability to harness more data about what’s happening on the plant floor.

“Manufacturing is data-driven, and if you don’t have it, you can’t find problems,” he says. “When you can go into EASE and see an issue happening with one machine, that’s a good indicator you might want to look at other ones as well. You can’t do that with a spreadsheet.”