Pepper Communications has already learned a great deal after taking its first steps towards lean manufacturing. The Plymouth-based direct mail and general print specialist is striving for continuous improvement; it hasn’t been easy and there is much work still to be done but Pepper’s production manager Jake Whitford is pleased with the progress made so far.

I highly recommend going down this route to any other print company, he says. You learn so much about the company and your colleagues.

Like several print firms, Pepper has found that moving towards lean manufacturing has been a gradual, evolving process and one that needs to be driven by every member of staff. It’s been just over a year since the company started the strategy but the signs are that it is taking the right steps at a time when the print industry is at its most volatile.

Founded in 1982 by Whitford’s father, Steve, who is managing director, the company started life as Design and Print Workshop producing jobs like business cards and stationery. Fifteen years ago, Whitford’s elder brother Jude, commercial director, came into the business and set about changing the image and strategy of the company. In came the new name, and a shift towards the higher end of the print market. Today the firm has a workforce of 45 and an annual turnover of around £4m.

We’re not the average printer on the street, adds Whitford. We now deal with agencies and directly with clients. We’ve also expanded and made the decision to install a B1 press.

Vision in Print
Over the past three years, the firm has invested almost £4m in new equipment. The culmination was the purchase of a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 with Image Control and associated finishing equipment. Pepper has also moved into new, purpose-built premises.

However, the investments came at a time when the sector was about to experience that most traumatic of events, the recession. Plans to double turnover were put on hold. Like practically every other print firm, the downturn presented problems for Pepper. However, there was one plan that wasn’t put on the back burner.

We knew that we couldn’t increase turnover so we looked at what we could do to reduce costs and be more efficient, explains Whitford. We wanted to be more organised in what we were doing.

Pepper decided to implement the Vision in Print lean manufacturing programme. The early stages involved going over every nook and cranny at the company to find out where improvements could be made. It meant involving staff across the company, from press hall to pre-press. It was designed to map out where we were — we had a brainstorm, adds Whitford.

Most of Pepper’s aims link up with what it was already striving for, the ISO 9001 and 14001 quality and environmental standards (both attained in October last year). In addition, Pepper achieved the FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody.
Whitford admits that it was initially tough to get all the staff onside. There is often fierce resistance to change, and this was, understandably, the case with members of the workforce who had been with Pepper for 20 years and were used to doing things their own way. The company needed to approach the situation differently, away from management telling staff what to do.

We needed staff to buy in, he says. We needed them to explain to us about their working practices, on the presses, folders or stitchers. We wanted to get their ideas in every department. We asked everybody to detail a step-by-step guide of what their role was and areas where things could be improved. People are more empowered to carry out a procedure if they themselves helped create it.

When undertaking a move to lean manufacturing and continuous improvement, involving staff at the start is the only option for a company; without their help and commitment, any switch to lean can fall at the first hurdle. So far, the transition has been a success, with improvements already made in pre-press.

We make a mock-up of each job, says Whitford. Once it’s made up and meets our standards we attach a quality sticker to it. Only then does it move to the next stage.

In addition, Pepper has implemented clear walkways throughout the site; a key element of any lean strategy. And that’s one of several changes that staff have maintained over the last few months. It’s still early days and the next step is to drill down further into the data Pepper has collated.

We now plan to clean up our MIS — this will give us a lot more detail as there’s a lot of legacy data that needs to be cleaned up, adds Whitford. It will give us a better handle on where we are going on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis. It also helps us to develop our key performance indicators (KPIs) — we are still shaping them.

Communication
Once Pepper has finalised those, it’s a case of communicating them to the workforce, giving them clearer long-term goals. Communication is a major factor; displays throughout the business clearly show staff not only their targets but also how they are progressing.

It’s been so far, so good for Pepper, and the process has helped bring the workforce together as well as tapping into bags of enthusiasm. Everybody understands the current market and economic conditions, says Whitford. We have a strong and positive team here from different backgrounds. If you speak to anyone they will tell you that they enjoy working at Pepper. We are proud to show our clients around: we encourage that and welcome them. That approach has helped us to win work and instilled confidence in the client. That’s crucial; it’s hard to win clients and you really have to keep them.
He adds: You feel the benefits straight away. Jobs run more smoothly and there are financial benefits. A lack of communication in the past meant that there were jobs having to be reworked.

It might be early days for Pepper as it strives for continuous improvement, but the initial results suggest that going lean has been good for winning business from new customers and inculcating a sense of pride in the workforce.

COMMENT

Margins are under pressure like never before. The solution for the best companies is to take major cost out of the company without cutting your own throat by getting rid of staff you may need in the longer term. The principle tool for this is continuous improvement.

The case study from Pepper is a good example of a typical commercial printer getting stuck in and discovering that there are plenty of opportunities for efficiency gains if you look at matters with fresh, trained eyes. The first step for most companies is to get a third-party assessment of their current efficiency and the best opportunities for improvement. Over 500 printers have received the Howard Smith Snapshot diagnostic since 2004 and it is the gold standard in benchmarking operational performance in the sector. With better data capture habits more widespread in the industry, the time has come to raise the bar and offer more advanced data feedback as an integral part of the Snapshot.

The new Snapshot Plus still contains the core benefits of Snapshot with a high-level process map showing the interaction of material and information flow in your operations, plus a report showing how the company’s operations compare against other print and packaging companies for 14 key criteria. Now Vision in Print has added an analysis of seven key operational measures that quantify your customer service, costs and productivity (see the best-practice tips). The key to the success of Snapshot over the past five years is that it is a non-judgmental feedback on a company’s operational performance, and a checklist of activities that the company can use to improve performance radically.

Richard Gray is commercial director at the BPIF