Assessment of the Implementation of Manufacturing Excellence in a Fiber Based Packaging Manufacturing Environment

The paper industry is facing continuous decline due to a combination of input costs and competition. In addition to these concerns of input costs and competition, product quality has been an ongoing problem as customer complaints have been translating to cumulative increases to operational costs as observed by Evergreen Packaging. In a survey conducted by Evergreen Packaging in the year 2014 of customer complaints, these product quality issues materialized as an area of concern. As such, Evergreen Packaging felt the need to implement an improvement program with the goal of improving quality to increase customer satisfaction. The goal of the improvement program was to reduce the operating costs of the company through the reduction of the top five complaints, and the top five dollars lost due to complaints, in each facility by 90%. The improvement program followed the principles of Manufacturing Excellence, with the company working with external consultants who are experts in Manufacturing Excellence. Statistical tests were then conducted to determine the improvements of the improvement program following a set period of time after its implementation