A taste of home

Nishant Fatania, Manufacturing Manager Kate's Cakes

My job is great! Kate's Cakes is a versatile, fast-paced manufacturing environment, baking cakes just like you would at home in small batches and finished by hand. It's hard not to be passionate about food that is manufactured in this way.

I've been at Kate's for three years and with the samples I bring home, I'm definitely flavour of the month with my house mates. In particular our newly developed banana loaf cake goes down a treat.

I joined Kate's Cakes in 2005 on a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). The KTP is a graduate training opportunity that allows graduates to apply their knowledge and expertise to industry. My degree is in mechanical engineering and I was tasked with analysing the business to challenge and ultimately improve its efficiency. At the end of my two-year programme, I set up a project team to continue the improvement work on a larger scale. Soon after establishing the team, the decision was taken to divide the bakery across two manufacturing sites and the opportunity arose to head up unit three, the craft artisan bakery. I jumped at the chance.

As manufacturing manager I run my unit almost as a separate business. I'm responsible for the budget for my unit and take the time to understand exactly how much we spend a day on labour and wastage. Along with the manager of the second site, I report into Tim Breden, the head of operations. There's a lot of responsibility on my head, but I relish it. It means I have total ownership of my unit - and therefore I take pride in making sure we run as efficiently as possible.

Kate's Cakes is famous for its own brand of impulse slices available in coffee chains, independent coffee shops and pubs in the UK and, increasingly, in Europe. What many don't realise is that we also supply a large number of high-profile, global, high street brands with their round cakes, slices, muffins, cereal bars, desserts and more. To give you some idea of life at Kate's, we launch 150 products a year - or three new products a week. I make sure I'm closely involved in launching the product so that I have a good understanding of new developments due to be manufactured in my factory.

Efficiency is the key

In cake making, wastage can be a big issue, especially if you use all natural ingredients as we do at Kate's. One of the improvements I led was a wastage measuring system. I found that while we were recording lots of relevant information, it was not being processed or analysed. The challenge was to collate the data so that we could track it easily and quickly. The system has consequently cut our wastage and improved our manufacturing output.

I mapped our development process. We identified 256 stages in total in developing a product, from when a customer comes to us and asks for, say, a berry muffin, to when it is sold in their stores. I devised a way of recording each step in the development process and combining all the stages into a chart. This has led to a more cohesive and structured approach to launching products, as every department now understands when and how it needs to interact with other departments to efficiently launch a product.

At Kate's we're developing up to 140 different products at any one time. I took on a project to improve the costing process of our new products. With so many new product developments taking place each week, the costing for each had started to become a bit of a blur. As before, we had all the information available in the company, but it wasn't all in one place. I realised that we needed a new system. Using simple process analysis, I developed a tool to consolidate the costing process and improve the communication flow between departments. The new system had to be easily accessible and easily understood, otherwise it would have no impact.

Take the Banana Loaves we recently launched for a top-end retail chain. When costing them, we didn't add any element of safety so that we could keep our competitive edge - normal practice for any business. However, we were making them at a very high volume, so it was absolutely essential that we got the costing correct. We analysed the costs, processes and wastages at each stage of manufacture. We looked at the cost of logistics - not just how much it costs us to put the products on a lorry, but also the potential need to travel test a product, temperature controls, bar coding, loading and unloading. With all this information in one place, we could make sure that our costing was realistic. Since I've been here we've also had power factor correction fitted to the site. It's quite something that while we increased our manufacturing by 20% we managed to reduce our electricity costs by 11%. We buy 'green energy', which means we source all of our energy from 100% renewable sources. We do pay more for this, but we consider it part and parcel of our business ethos.

As far as packaging goes, we've reduced it as much as possible and we recycle all our cardboard, paper and plastic to minimise the impact on the environment. All of our food waste is sent to be turned into animal feed, so very little goes to landfill.

Staff and communication

Kate's employs over 500 people at the moment. In the factory we operate a seven-day shift system, 363 days a year. The average individual works a 12-hour shift four days on, four days off and there are two12-hour shifts a day.

From managers to the factory workers, I believe we all have our own important role to play in the end result. I hold meetings with my teams on the shop floor, as this is where the action takes place.

Kate's Cakes has developed a forum called 'Our Voice'. We hold a series of meetings where everyone, whatever part of the business they are involved in, can come together and share their ideas.

We hold all-company business briefings twice a year to let everyone know how we're doing and explain our plans for the rest of the year. This way everyone knows what they've achieved and where we're going.

Looking ahead

A lot has changed since the company was first set up nearly 20 years ago, but the ethos is unchanged. We've resisted large scale automation because we believe that the passion that the team brings to the cakes is what makes our products special, plus we want to be flexible. So if a customer asks us to try something new, it's no problem. We make lots of carrot cake, but we don't supply the same carrot cake to any of our customers. Each has its own distinct twist - start automating and you take away that uniqueness.

Passionate - that's the best word to describe us. Together we make delicious cakes with passion and pride - and I'm proud to be part of the team.

INTERVIEW BY hayley brown

FACTORY FACTS

Location: Ashington, West Sussex

Employees: 200 in my factory, 500 at Kate's Cakes

Output: 100,000 batches of cake per annum

Turnover: £16M that contributes to an overall figure of £30M plus

Products: Cakes, cookies, muffins and more

Customers: Major coffee shops, high end retail, and foodservice

PERSONAL

Name: Nishant Fatania

Age: 26

Career highlights: Setting up and establishing the projects department.

But there are also exciting times ahead at Kate's. It has recently taken over a third unit, which it is planning to convert into

a dedicated manufacturing site for own- brand products

Domestics: I live in Brighton with my girlfriend and a couple of mates

Hobbies and likes outside work: Going to gigs, playing footy, taking bad photos, chilling out on the beach and generally anything that gets me out into the great outdoors