Jotun Paints makes Lean advances

Flixborough, UK - Jotun Paints (Europe) Ltd has been implementing new Lean management systems across its UK manufacturing site and satellite offices, which has enabled the company to reduce waste and improve customer service.

Jotun brought the Lean ideology to its head office and manufacturing plant in Flixborough initially. The aim was to increase efficiencies on existing equipment, highlight hidden capacity and completely eliminate order backlog.

To carry the project forward, a cross sectional team was set up who looked at getting the best out of their available resources and aimed to encourage the Jotun workforce to work smarter, not harder. The team was able to make use of several tools from the Lean cannon, including Value Stream Mapping, which focuses upon material and information flow, and Single Minute Exchange Die (SMED).

A common theme with all of the tools used was the emphasis on resolving material and information flow issues. SMED interrogates and provides ways of converting a manufacturing process from running one product to the next product, enabling a reduction in production lot sizes and thereby improving flow through the supply chain.

As a result of interrogating their working methods, Jotun's Flixborough plant has reduced their batch sizes, enabling greater production flexibility. This has enabled them to produce more SKUs (stock keeping units) in a 24-hour period, upped their maximum capacity, improved their cash flow and reduced their cycle time on certain product ranges to an impressive 70 minutes.

Factory manager Ben Parsley explained: "Lean is all about working smarter and not harder and is a continuous never ending journey. It is all about focusing on the correct areas that will give the business the biggest & easiest gain ... from an operative based level we need to make sure we have plenty of success stories along the way, to ensure the momentum builds and improvements are continued."

While Jotun has already made vast improvements, enabling them to deliver better results for their clients, they still see areas in which they can make improvements, said Parsley: "We still have many areas that we can focus on to improve flow further, increase capacity whilst still maintaining a high on time in full measure to our customers."

Jotun Paints (Europe) Ltd is part of the Norway-based Jotun Group, a global manufacturer of paints, coatings and powder coatings. The group operates 67 companies and 40 production facilities across five continents. The company employs 5,300 people worldwide,  including 184 in the UK, and has sales of over $ 1.2 billion. In the UK, it supplies protective coatings for the offshore, cathodic and industrial sectors, marine coatings and decorative paints sectors.