The Packaging Solutions team in New South Wales is thriving after studying the Japanese art of kaizen from manufacturing giant, Toyota through an intensive and rewarding mentorship.
Kaizen is the basis for the “Toyota way of thinking”, and it roughly translates to “continuous improvement”; something Stephen Price, General Manager Packaging Solutions and his team are passionate about.
“Toyota specialises in educating companies in continuous improvement through the Toyota Production System Support Centre (TSSC),” explains Stephen.
Stephen Price - General Manager, Packaging Solutions“We consulted TSSC because we wanted to improve production and organisation at our packaging solutions sites,” he says. “But the ultimate goal was to find a way for supervisors to have more time to spend with our supported employees, training them and reaching goals together.”
Over six months, a team of TSSC engineers visited our packaging solutions sites and advised on ways they could be improved to become more efficient and sustainable. That was followed by a session for six Scope staff at the TSSC “Dojo” at Toyota’s head office. The ‘Dojo’ was an intensive training and simulation experience intended to instil the mentality of kaizen,” Stephen says.
“Six months, four site visits, many coffees, bundles of post-it notes and reams of butchers paper later, the project team have come away with amazing learnings on how to make our enterprises more efficient and productive,” he added.
So, what’s next for the packaging solutions team?
“Going forward we will have a dedicated “Toyota Champion” to work with site managers and staff to continue the Toyota way of thinking, and embed the structures and procedures learnt during the last six months,” Stephen says.
For anyone that works with the team now, you can see the changes in approach and how embedded the practices have become. What a great example of excelling together, we are excited to see what’s possible now with this new mindset.
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