Tetra Pak Advanced Operations Management

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Then the rolls are un-mounted and sent to the “lasor” which reviews all the problems which are present in the rolls and it is checked through the tags previously assigned to the sleeves or the rolls, the defects may be rupturing of the paper dust or more. If there are any defects they are sent to the doctrine station where 9 different stations check the sleeves and try to remove the defects if possible, if not those parts are removed and sent to the slitter when there are 4 to 5 defects in a row. If there are no problems the rolls are directly carried forward to the conveyor and are joined by the ones which have been approved in the doctrine. Lastly there is a packaging where the pellets are created, wrapped and sent out to the warehouse and dispatching.

QUALITY BARRIERS

- In the printing stage there is constant check of the printing alignment, to ensure that every print is at the right place and the roll is not wasted. This is done by a machine by FUTEC which constantly monitors the alignment of the print.

- After the printing is complete, the rolls are reviewed manually, in order to make sure that there are no creases or holes in the rolls after the printing stage this check is necessary.

- In the lamination stage there is a quality barrier which is called EGS in the technical jargon, this is actually grammage control where the paper is scanned and notices any breakages in the paper.

- The biggest quality barrier is that of the lasor, this lasor’s job is to review each segment and match it with the sample reference provided in the system. All defects in lamination are removed here which includes any dust, wrinkles and ruptures in the sheet. The system puts electronic tags on areas that need to be corrected,

- After the rigorous quality checks the rolls are taken to doctrine machine where the rolls are manually reviewed. Any defects are now cut down. The customers usually allow 4 to 5 slices in one roll.

Operational Excellence

Tetra Pak has a clear picture in mind as to how they improve their operations. They want constant improvement in their operations to minimize quality issues in the operations. Operational excellence is something that is not taken lightly at Tetra Pak. For instance the lamination machine which was considered to be the bottleneck in Tetra Pak’s operations had a board which had highlighted and bold text saying “EE → 85%”. On asking about what that meant, it was told that it was an abbreviation for equipment efficiency.

The lamination machine which was said to be the bottle neck. The plant manager however was committed to achieve this goal in the coming months. Same sort of boards were seen in other parts of the plant as well which gave the workers a goal to work for. The people on the floor kept a constant check on all of the operations to minimize the stops and breakdown of machinery for which there were weekly and daily maintenance scheduled for all of the machines in the facility.

Operational Innovation:

Tetra Pak is one of the most efficiently run business in Pakistan, where new ideas and new ways of doing things is something that is always welcome. And because of the innovation in the facility, it is considered to one of the best.Tetra Pak was one of the first names in Pakistan to come up with the seven layer packaging

Kaizan (continuous improvement):

They were also improvements that were being employed by the company. The world class manufacturing system was in place but they still were motivated to make the shifts from one process to another smoother and wanted minimized stops and breakout of processes.

They had seven defined steps in which they wanted constant improvements:

- World class manufacturing setup

- Continuous automating systems

- Document all details (no matter how minor)

- Evaluation and Control

- Remote Monitoring

- Limit human interaction

- Eradication source of the problem

Inventory management

The biggest chunk in the inventory is the Raw material and it’s the most expensive and largest in terms of quanitity. Raw materials include paper board, aluminum and plastic. The second biggest chunk is of finished goods which are kept in their own Warehouse and once it is produced the customer comes and picks it up according to their own planning and requirement. As the value has been added to it, it’s the most expensive in terms of Euros and days because once it’s produced it takes up the space as well unless and until the customer comes and picks it up. Carrying cost is not given much attention because they have their own storage which was a onetime expense. Unless they will have to rent an external storage there is no storage or carrying cost. There are minor expenses for the warehouse like utilities, forklift maintenance, the workers there also are a onetime expense as their salaries are fixed and they don’t change.

They do monitor the Carrying cost in terms of days which means that if there is more stock then needed, there is inefficiency, is there is too less stock then there will be shortage. That has to be checked according to the Forecast made and in collaboration with the customer. Otherwise Carrying cost or storage expense is not given much emphasis or it isn’t considered material. The quantity that needs to be there is decided with the help of SAP. SAP is Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing and it is a German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. This software has various formulas that calculate the EOQ and re order points for the company. That too is done on the inputs provided to it which include the demand forecast, production forecast, safety stock levels, on set stock which is the stock that they have on the site, and then there is transit stock. As Tetra Pak imports most of its stock and comes by sea so there is stock in transit as well. The tool that they use within SAP is IOPT, which is inventory optimizer which then takes into account all these factors and lets the operators know when and how much inventory needs to be ordered. There is always a buffer of 1 to 2 weeks in terms of time when talking about ordering inventory. Moreover 80% of the paper board is imported while the rest comes from Bulleh Shah and