'Revive the 'dead art' of industrial engineering or lose profits'
One bakery plant manager said Donaldson's work had resulted in "over £1M of savings". It reduced agency headcount by 67, slashed waste and overproduction and added significantly to overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
"The feedback was good even from the unions," he said. "Alan and his team kicked things off in May. We were starting to see results in four weeks and, by September, we had achieved more than we said we would. It was a lean manufacturing approach, but more practical."
Techniques that were particularly beneficial were root cause analyses, which cleared up recurring kit failures and daily team huddles, supervised by senior managers.
Donaldson claims another project his consulting and recruitment firm worked on added at least £750,000 to bottom-line profits. Often savings related to cutting numbers of agency workers, rather than permanent staff. In some cases OEE had been increased from less than 50% to more than 70%.
To improve plant efficiency, Donaldson handpicks a team of industrial engineers, drawing on a pool of interim personnel. "The savings I guarantee are at a minimum 5% of labour costs, so for a plant with 1,000 staff, the aim is to save the cost of 50100 staff from the bottom line."
However, his pool of interims was diminishing and consisted largely of workers aged 50 and upwards, who were the only properly trained industrial engineers left, he said.
The food industry must revive the art of industrial engineering or lose out on massive savings, warned Donaldson.
Industrial engineering techniques include many features of lean manufacturing, plus uniquely breaking tasks down, measuring how long and how many staff they took to complete and making efficiency adjustments. "Time and motion studies are a dead art. Food firms don't have industrial engineers now."
