Success Story
Based in Gresham, Oregon, Scenic Fruit Company is one of the oldest berry processors in the Northwest. Along with packing and contract packaging, Scenic Fruit offers a variety of value-added capabilities and approaches required for the more competitive natural and organic foods market segments. Founded in 1931, Scenic Fruit Company delivers quality through experience to its customer base.
OMEP initially supported Scenic Fruit Company’s team by building their internal understanding of Lean principles. We put an emphasis on identifying and resolving constraints, improving plant operating efficiencies, creating flow, and reducing waste.
With a continuous improvement foundation in place, the team desired to become a more advanced Lean organization. They sought OMEP’s support to develop and apply lean thinking to their business systems and information processing flows – going beyond the shop floor for maximum impact. Facing increasing competitive pressures, the team partnered with OMEP to build future growth strategies and meet their operational challenges head-on.
To support the team in their desire for enterprise-driven solutions, OMEP provided a combination of training, coaching, and consulting. With an emphasis on Lean Philosophy and Fundamentals, OMEP focused on the optimization of the re-pack Operation at the Gresham site. To begin, OMEP assessed the health of the Re-Pack Operation through the process of Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Initial efforts focused on reducing unscheduled downtime and improving product changeovers.
Best practices were documented and tracked to gain consistency. Improvements in these areas of time loss created new capacity and operational flexibility. Forecasting and scheduling strategies were then developed and played a significant role in additional productivity. Along the way, OMEP provided education, coaching, and implementation of Lean Enterprise/Operational Excellence skill sets to the executive leadership team so they could carry learned practices to their shop floor employees.
As a result of applying lean principles, the Scenic Fruit Company realized capacity gains, reduced changeover and downtime, and increased first-time quality. They experienced a cost savings of over $500,000 due to capacity improvements and better labor utilization. Over $1 million in new sales were realized, and 50 jobs were retained in spite of the challenges presented by COVID-19 over the past two years. More importantly, the Scenic Fruit company now has advanced lean and continuous improvement methodologies in place, allowing them the flexibility to grow successfully for years to come.
Working with OMEP on lean principles for our re-pack line was hugely beneficial to us. From the production floor to management we were able to speak the same language and work together to improve our processes from simple changeovers to advanced monthly production scheduling.