From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

The Manufacturing Directors
Council ready to sail on the
Zuiderzee – what is now
the IJsselmeer lake – in the
Netherlands.
Front row: (left to right)
Pieter van Lipzig, Ken Wilmot,
Henk Jongstra, Bruce Phillips,
Hans den Daas, Rob Bakker.
Back row: Maarten Stam,
Rod MacDonald, Jeff Twomey,
Kees Oreel, Carl Morris, Lloyd
Borowski, Dave Rogers, Oscar
Orbetta, Jean François Cousin,
Seth Gaunch, Dale McCarthy,
Peter Burman, Meindert Jan
Kramer.
and passed on information from one factory to another. If, for example, a European
plant came up with an improved method of blanching raw potatoes, Morris and
Bliss would ensure that all the other plants in the McCain network found out
about it.
In the 1980s, Morris decided the company needed more direct communication
among its factories, so he initiated manufacturing conferences that took place at
least once every two years. These were meetings of all McCain plant managers from
around the world, convening at a different location each time. Each manager was assigned
a particular subject to prepare a paper and then speak on, such as peeling or
frying. His role would be to research the topic and instruct all the others about the
state of the art in that particular process. Each paper was discussed and critiqued, and
each manager went home with a package of papers that, as a whole, constituted the
most advanced practice to that date in potato processing.
The big advantage of this system is that there is usually one person with a particular
strong suit. By having that person bring everyone else up to his standard, “the
whole operation is then as good as our best man on that particular subject,” Morris
says. And if a plant manager later has a problem, he can look at the conference paper,
but he can also pick up the phone and call the manager at the other plant who is especially
strong in that area.
Although the manufacturing conferences worked well, McCain eventually had too
many plant managers to include them all in one meeting. In 1997, the Manufacturing
Directors Council was formed, grouping together the manufacturing director from each
country as well as engineering and technical people. This council meets twice a year,
usually at a plant where a new improvement has recently been made. The members of
the council relay what they learn to the plant managers in their home countries.
Harrison McCain had two cardboard plaques he
liked to give to his managers. One said, “There is nothing
a man can’t achieve if he does not care who gets the
credit.” The other said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t
manage it.”
Harrison put the latter slogan into practice by asking
Morris to investigate Total Quality Management
(TQM), a system developed by Edwards Deming, an
American management expert, to help Japanese manufacturers
become efficient producers of high-quality
products. Morris customized TQM for McCain and in
1989 launched the McCain Quality Performance (MQP) system as a data-driven set of
standards and problem-solving methods. Measuring performance was an important
aspect of MQP. It allowed McCain to introduce a system of internal benchmarking by
which all units were expected to match the performance of the most effective ones.
Morris hired Neil D’Souza as global MQP manager, to guide the MQP managers at
each factory. For many years, the program was successful at finding ways to improve
the manufacturing process through employee involvement.
In 2005, a new performance enhancement system, McCain Competitive Edge
(MCE), replaced MQP. Based on a continuous improvement methodology known as
Lean Six Sigma, MCE’s mandate is to improve safety, quality, and productivity.
Lean and Six Sigma are complementary process-improvement techniques. Lean
focuses on eliminating non-value-added activities and waste from processes, while
Six Sigma’s aim is to reduce variation and improve quality.
“Lean makes sure we are working on the right things, while Six Sigma makes sure
we are doing the right things right,” explains Morris.
An important facet of MCE is the kaizen event. In Japanese, “kaizen” means “change
for the better.” Once a month, in every facility, teams of about ten people meet for five
days to review part of the operation. During these meetings, activities are reviewed
and changes implemented that transform some part of the business.
128 f rom the Ground up
the home front 129
A meeting on lift truck
issues during a Kaizen event,
Lelystad, 2007.