Operational Excellence at a dairy in Zimbabwe

The challenge

The owner of Dendairy, a dairy plant in Zimbabwe, came to us through an existing client asking us to help him increase the utilization rate (utilization) of his plant. He felt that it was lagging behind mainly because his management team was primarily engaged in micro-managing rather than performance management and because of a lack of standards.

Our approach

During the diagnosis, we used data analysis and work sessions with the teams to determine the current performance and its causes. Together with the people, the countermeasures/improvement ideas were determined. And together with the operations manager the plan of action was made.

Central to the approach was ownership of the solutions. To this end, 7 modules/teams were trained, which then set up pilots under supervision to prove the improvement method.

We conducted this project partly on site (1 week every 2 months) and partly online (1 day per week).