Clelands Timber - Competitive Manufacturing

In order to achieve its business targets within budget and increase productivity, New Plymouth timber processing and construction company, Clelands Timber Ltd, has implemented the Competitive Manufacturing (CM) approach to staff training. The Competitive Marketing Institute has developed this system in association with a number of ITOs, including FITEC, the training organisation for the forestry, pulp and paper, wood panels, sawmilling, and furniture industries.

Competitive Manufacturing is a systematic approach to producing high quality goods, for the least cost and with the least waste. CM trains staff to look critically at their work processes, gives them tools to identify ways of improving those processes, and to find simple low cost or even no cost solutions as a team.

General Manager Alistair Dore said the training encourages staff to weed out wasteful practices and 12 months after implementing CM he has seen a significant culture change. This has led to a turnaround in Cleland Timbers operating results and has had a significant impact on changeover times and uptime of machines.

“Our finger jointing changeover times decreased from 20 to 2 minutes and finger jointer throughput increased between 10% and 12% through simple changes the teams made. A simple tool belt and a set of tools for each operator helped reduced our planer changeover times from 40 to 20 minutes. The total cost of $1,000 for this solution was insignificant when compared to the gains in productivity,” he said.

Significant improvements resulted through supervisors and staff taking greater ownership of their departments. Staff now have more information about the business and are able to apply in practice what they have learnt.

Despite turnover going down by 22% last year Clelands Timber gross profit percentage increased slightly over the previous year. Investing in staff training, tools and visual management has already proved to be a sustainable way of improving productivity. Clelands are committed to a continuous journey of improvement with a powerful new set of Competitive Manufacturing skills with which to compete in the international market.

WEBSITE: www.fitec.org.nz