Hatch­ing new results and reduc­ing wastage by switch­ing to a new way of working

Back­ground

The poul­try indus­try is a sec­tor of agri­cul­ture focused on the breed­ing, rais­ing, and pro­cess­ing of domes­ti­cat­ed birds for their meat and eggs. The indus­try is an inte­gral part of the glob­al food sys­tem and plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in pro­vid­ing afford­able pro­tein sources for human consumption.

Our client is a South Asian con­glom­er­ate that has diver­si­fied into var­i­ous activ­i­ties such as the sale of broil­er chicks, poul­try feed, com­mer­cial lay­er eggs, broil­er hatch­ing eggs, and broil­er live birds.

The client is also one of the high­est sell­ers of broil­er chicks and poul­try feed in South Asia. As part of diver­si­fi­ca­tion into oth­er indus­tries, the client has also for­ayed into sol­vent extrac­tion and the edu­ca­tion sector.

As a result of tremen­dous organ­ic growth, the client urgent­ly need­ed more effec­tive man­age­ment sys­tems (MCS) to have bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty and con­trol over its oper­a­tions. They need­ed a part­ner that could eas­i­ly under­stand the real­i­ty on the ground, and design and imple­ment the most appro­pri­ate MCS to cap­i­talise on cur­rent and emerg­ing busi­ness opportunities.

Analy­sis

We were brought in to analyse the clien­t’s var­i­ous farms and sup­port relat­ed func­tions such as pur­chas­ing and logis­tics. The pur­pose of the analy­sis was to under­stand how well sys­tems were con­trol­ling and dri­ving pro­duc­tion process­es, farm activ­i­ties, and sup­port func­tions, and how they could be changed to improve pro­duc­tion performance.

Our analy­sis iden­ti­fied huge vari­abil­i­ties in how essen­tial­ly the same process­es were being man­aged. Prac­tices were dif­fer­ent from place to place, and knowl­edge was con­fined to only a few peo­ple. Essen­tial­ly, it was the manager’s capa­bil­i­ties that were dri­ving effi­cien­cies instead of the system.

After estab­lish­ing the need with top man­age­ment, we kick­start­ed a 24-week project to design and imple­ment more effec­tive man­age­ment systems.

Project Approach

We began by set­ting up a task­force made up of client-side experts, and form­ing two Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs) to man­age the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives and ensure par­tic­i­pa­tion from all key process own­ers. Our con­sul­tants sup­port­ed both the task­force and MATs.

The results of var­i­ous stud­ies and test­ing meth­ods (DILOs, MCS critque, as-is assess­ments, issue Trees, and more) gave us an idea of areas that need­ed improv­ing. The results also informed the devel­op­ment and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of a fit-for-purpose MCS. Mul­ti­ple design and devel­op­ment work­shops were car­ried out to fos­ter own­er­ship by the wider team.

Project Imple­men­ta­tion

A time-bound imple­men­ta­tion roadmap was approved to resolve any pre­vail­ing issues that might pop up in a sus­tain­able way while estab­lish­ing a long-term cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. Man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments were installed to improve pro­duc­tion per­for­mance through KPIs and per­for­mance reviews.

Mul­ti­ple train­ing ses­sions were pro­vid­ed to the task­force, farm super­vi­sors and man­agers. We also improved the flow of infor­ma­tion so that there was time­ly res­o­lu­tion of issues relat­ing to farm per­for­mance. In order to improve data avail­abil­i­ty and expe­dite decision-making, we estab­lished new sys­tems for effi­cient data cap­ture and reporting.

Oth­er solu­tions that were imple­ment­ed dur­ing this 24-week project include:

1. Iden­ti­fy­ing crit­i­cal farm activ­i­ties and devel­op­ing SOPs for each activ­i­ty. Reg­u­lar train­ing in the use of SOPs was pro­vid­ed and exams were con­duct­ed for the supervisors.
2. Super­vi­sors were trained analysing fre­quent prob­lems using the ‘5 Whys’ method­ol­o­gy. Cor­rec­tive actions were ver­i­fied by man­agers and pre­sent­ed to top man­age­ment. The best root cause analy­ses were reward­ed to build a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improvement.
3. KPIs were iden­ti­fied to cap­ture pro­duc­tion per­for­mance. Dash­boards and reports were cir­cu­lat­ed to man­agers to improve the decision-making process.
4. Dash­board and KPI-based review meth­ods were installed with time-bound action logs.
5. Root cause analy­ses of crit­i­cal issues in the farms were under­tak­en with cor­rec­tive and pre­ven­tive action tracers.
6. Cre­at­ing and train­ing a busi­ness excel­lence team to ensure sus­tain­abil­i­ty, by car­ry­ing out fur­ther improve­ments once our team had con­clud­ed the work.

“The way this team led us in iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, devel­op­ing sys­tems, mea­sur­ing KPIs, imple­ment­ing change, and final­ly ensur­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty is com­mend­able. At the end of the project, I felt that the mis­sion was accom­plished.”
CEO

Results