30% reduction in startup time at a national FMCG manufacturer

This FMCG food manufacturer was losing total productive hours each week and could not identify the cause. Their paper-based production startup checklist showed it was taking over 60 minutes to get a line operational some days — lost wages, lost production. We digitised all production checklists, introduced a digital Gemba Walk for production leaders to complete each morning, and added a QR code on the wall for staff to raise improvement ideas. The checklists showed a trend in startup cleaning issues; a staff improvement idea was captured in a Gemba Walk and the team introduced a new end-of-day cleaning practice that greatly reduced morning cleaning. Production hours recovered by 3.5 per week and startup time fell 30%.