The Omsk fish and seafood processing plant summed up the interim results of the introduction of lean production

A meeting dedicated to summarizing the interim results of the federal project "Labor Productivity" was held on the basis of the ICEBERG 8 enterprise. The federal project is a key component of the national project "Efficient and Competitive Economy".

The company has been operating in the Omsk market since 2009 and specializes in deep processing of fish and seafood. The ICEBERG 8 range includes a wide range of products in demand: frozen fish of primary processing, fillets of various types of white and red fish, steaks, portioned pieces for baking.

We started implementing lean production tools from the fish fillet production site. This is the most widespread and marginal area of the company's activity. Any delays or losses at this stage directly affect the cost of the rest of the product line and total revenue.  The company's team is working on this task together with experts from the Regional Competence Center.

Maxim Shergin, Project Manager of the Omsk Region RCC: "The Federal Labor Productivity Project is not just a way to receive government support or free expert advice. It is a tool for survival and advanced development in conditions of severe personnel shortage. We come to factories to work with our team to build a system where each employee understands the value of their work, is proud of it and can influence the result. When people see that their work is becoming easier, more efficient and safer, the economic effect increases many times. Our main goal is to teach our teams how to replicate these successes to other parts of their businesses on their own."

The joint work of experts from the Omsk Region RCC and the ICEBERG 8 working group began with a deep audit. Diagnostics revealed systemic problems: in one shift, the product moved a total of 4.8 kilometers through the workshops, and the workplaces were cluttered with excess containers and inventory.

During the reporting period, the team implemented a set of measures:

Loss analysis – about 40 factors hindering growth have been identified. The key problems were the low productivity of the cutting operation ("fish shearing"), queues in front of the shock freezing chambers, and heavy manual labor when moving crates of raw materials between tables.

Staff Training – Employees undergo intensive training in lean manufacturing tools and prepare for certification to become internal lean instructors.

Workplace organization – now the zones of the shift master and the head of the production workshop have been transformed. The 5C principle made it possible to cope with chaos: each tool now has its own place, which eliminates the loss of time searching for the right item.

Creation of a development infrastructure – a project office has been formed on the basis of the enterprise, which will become an internal center of expertise for lean manufacturing.

Sergey Kondratiev, director of ICEBERG 8, shared his opinion after three months of intensive work: "When we saw our Spaghetti diagram (production flow diagram), we understood what to do. A structural analysis of the production process and detailed measurements clearly showed us the "bottlenecks", as well as where exactly it is possible to increase the volume. The second important change concerned the attitude to work. The status of the event and the training allowed the team to look at the problems differently. Previously, any failure caused a desire to turn everything back on faster, as long as the equipment was idle less, without analyzing the reasons."

In 3 months, the company will summarize the final results at the pilot site, after which it will begin to replicate the experience independently for 2.5 years. You can apply for participation in the project on the Productivity platform.RF.