Integrity Print's Lean Journey

IPIA Article 16^th August 2010

Integrity Print adopted the disciplines of lean manufacturing ten years ago to ensure that the company was able to prosper in a highly competitive market. As a result of this journey, Integrity has been able to drive out over £8m of costs, through increased productivity and reduced waste.

Integrity’s ultimate goal is to create more value utilising fewer resources, with the holy grail being the achievement of perfect quality with zero waste. While this is a never ending journey, the whole culture of lean enables the business to focus on every process and endeavour to continuously improve it.

Managing Director Mark Cornford brought his lean vision to Integrity from the automotive industry and has nurtured the culture among the workforce. He is a passionate advocate of the benefits, “Lean is not a one off project – it is a business lifestyle. It has been critical to our success that we have developed a broad based culture, where people are empowered and can take ownership of their work place. We have then been able to work together to identify the root cause of inefficiency without fear of the consequences. To me, lean is about creating a working environment where we can all maximise our potential.”

Production Director Mike Thorne is one of the key stakeholders in steering Integrity along the lean route. He described the need to win the hearts and minds of the whole workforce and the importance of having a culture of mutual trust.

“In order to engage and involve the workforce it is important that lean is not seen as a conduit for reducing headcount. You need your employees to think lean and act lean, and it is vital that they should not feel threatened by the process improvements.”

Thorne is keen to point out that the policy is to redeploy staff around the business when they are affected by lean improvements. “People need to feel both valued and secure” he says “it is vital that they have trust and confidence in the management team and that they understand how they fit in the organisation” Proof of the effectiveness of this policy is that Integrity has actually seen a small increase in headcount through the recession as additional capacity has been required and investment made in new revenue streams.

One very visible area where the lean culture at Integrity is evident to visitors is in the adoption of 5S discipline and the fact that employees across the board are proud to be part of the business. This sets a standard of house-keeping that encourages staff to take ownership of their own work areas. 5S creates a set of visual management tools that allows instant assessment of an area, an operation or a process.

A recent success has been the introduction of Overall Equipment Efficiency measures across all 50 web presses on the site. This has given a visible Key Performance Indicator of the productive time on each press, and across each of the six business units, that has encouraged continuous improvement and created an element of competition between production units as they strive to show the greatest measurable improvement. Since the introduction of this graphic KPI there has been a steady trend of improvement across all areas of print production that has had a significant impact on profitability. In the last 12 months the company has achieved a 6% overall improvement on press yields. This equates to 1400 additional tonnes being produced for the same number of production hours. As a yardstick a 1% improvement in OEE’s across the site is equivalent to yielding a £100k of additional net profit.

Thorne describes how in the early days it was easy to find quick wins and immediate improvements. “The challenge we now face,” he says, “is the need to keep questioning our processes even in areas where we have achieved productivity gains in the past. We must look for one hundred things where we can improve by 1% rather than one thing that can be improved by 100%”

Process improvement can be achieved through top down initiatives or more often by operator proposals. A recent project that has borne fruit, has been driven by the on-site engineering team who drew up a plan for utilising previously redundant kit to manufacture pressure seal stationery. The year long project has yielded a 40% increase in the company’s pressure seal capacity without increasing press or finishing hours and reduced waste on this product line by 2.5% overall.

Visitors to the Midsomer Norton site comment on the sense of purpose evident throughout the business, and the energy and focus that is brought to bear by all employees in the quest for continuous improvement. The lean process gives confidence to customers as it demonstrates a commitment to continually improving the value and quality of work being produced. The company has also engaged in joint lean projects with like-minded clients such as Lloyds TSB and RR Donnelly to drive efficiency right through the supply chain

Cornford summarises the benefits of lean, “For a print business to survive in this climate it is simply not good enough to just keep ticking over and resting on past success. We have to constantly evaluate what we do and find the marginal gains that lead to an overall incremental improvement of our business. The lean culture is now a fundamental part of the Integrity business model and encourages us all to continually strive for excellence”

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Integrity Print's Lean Journey

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