Three quarters of the dairies undertaking Dairy PROBES provided under Dairy UK’s Manufacturing Excellence Programme are capable of working at world class levels of performance and practice and the whole sector is better than the rest of the food industry in customer facing activities and process quality.
These are some of the final conclusions from the Dairy UK’s Manufacturing Excellence Programme which was brought to a close at a seminar at Dairy UK after three and half years of operation. Part funded by a grant from Defra, the programme provided diagnostic benchmarking through the Dairy PROBE tool provided by Comparison International Ltd, and intensive training in lean processing techniques through Masterclasses provided the Industry Forum.
In all 30 companies undertook Dairy PROBES and 11 benefited from Masterclasses. The data from dairy PROBEs allowed a picture to built up of the sectors performance against world class standards and other food sectors. Overall the industry performed well against other sectors and the particular strengths of the dairy industry were identified as service quality, customer facing processes, waste elimination, process quality and employee empowerment. Opportunities for improvement were identified in formalisation of performance measurement and management of staff.
The programme has left a lasting legacy in the industry through individual company action programmes built on the results of Dairy PROBES and in the higher level of staff training and motivation provided by Masterclasses. In conjunction with the commitment of staff time the programme represented a total investment of nearly £1m in the sector. Analyses of performance improvement and cost saving showed returns of up to 10 to 1 for individual companies in the programme.
Commenting on the finalisation of the programme Jim Begg said: "The whole programme showed that we are learning industry and that processors are constantly striving to improve their businesses. The prosperity of the industry rests on all elements of the supply chain facing up to the challenges of the future and this was yet more proof that farmers can have confidence in the willingness of processors to exploit new ideas and opportunities for business improvement."