Contact: Phyllis Levine at 845.896.6934 X3001 or by Email
HVTDC's Lean 101 Program Helps Balchem Corporation
Improve Production of International Products
HVTDC has successfully completed Lean 101 Training for the entire staff of the international Balchem Corporation in New Hampton, New York. In 2004, HVTDC was brought in to the Orange County Balchem Corporation to guide its supervisory team through Lean 101 training.
“From that training,” stated Plant Manager Christopher Klosen, “the leadership team picked up a lot of good ideas and made improvements right away. In 2005 we chose to put our entire operations personnel through HVTDC’s Lean Training.” Today the company is recognizing significant improvements in efficiency and an increase in profits from streamlining their production of state of the art solutions and quality products for a range of industries around the world. Those industries focus on meeting nutritional and product needs for humans and animals and are segmented into three corporate divisions, Encapsulated/Nutritional Products, ARC Specialty Products, and BCP Ingredients, Inc.
HVTDC’s Field Engineer, Phil Van Oss, conducted the plant-wide training and explained, “Our objective was to train them in working effectively together as a team. We assisted them through the Value Stream Mapping process of examining how products flow from one production step to another and where the biggest problems exist. The team’s goal was to identify where improvements could be made, and prioritize the most effective improvement activities. Over 12 weeks, we mentored them through implementing key improvements.”
Van Oss further explained that HVTDC’s role was to help the Balchem Team focus on what needed to be done to improve their operations and to solve problems. “Most of the time the team actively designed and implemented improvements while we offered guidance wherever necessary.” Balchem’s Klosen stated that, “By observing and mapping out the entire production process step by step, our team implemented improvements in the efficiency of that process. To observe the process objectively, we created a team that consisted of a cross functional group of people. We selected employees from every discipline in the plant: production operators, maintenance, quality control, shipping and receiving, production scheduling. We also followed HVTDC’s suggestion to include an employee who could offer a non-production perspective so we brought in a customer service representative from our corporate office to ask questions.”
Following the Value Stream Mapping process, Van Oss assisted the Balchem Lean Team in developing a Future State Map that created a plan to improve operational activities. “The goal,” explained Klosen, “was to improve the way things were being done and determine how they could be done better in the future based on the improvement activities the team identifies. Our Team identified a goal of 15% productivity improvement on our top eight products.”
Klosen reported that, “Through the Value Stream Mapping process we saw that the most significant improvement opportunity was in modifying our screening equipment. We brought in a technical rep who trained our staff in keeping the equipment efficiently tuned and getting product through faster. The result is that three of the eight products we wanted to improve now have an increased throughput of 30 to 40% faster. This is a very significant increase in production efficiency. We made very large improvements to three of the eight products we identified. This results in a sizable contribution to the overall efficiency of the plant.”