Kaizen Event: Pouring it on with G3!

Aluminum screw caps are on the rise with winemakers everywhere as a replacement for natural cork. (In fact, 85% of the wine produced in New Zealand is in bottles with caps rather than cork.) Screw caps provide the best seal for bottled wines, and eliminate the common musty "corked" smell and oxidation problem, while at the same time reducing cork cost and procurement issues. J.L. Clark decorates flat sheets of these screw cap closures for G3. Founded by the third generation of the Gallo family, G3 is one of the largest single source providers of quality packaging and many other resources to over 300 wine and spirits customers throughout North America. When it came time to 'tighten the tolerances' on the difficult process of producing very precise, highly decorative lithography on lightweight aluminum, the companies launched a highly successful Kaizen Event...

A Kaizen event (also called a Kaizen Burst) is an intensive, highly focused event designed to deliver rapid business process improvements. In the case of the J.L. Clark and G3, the objective of the Kaizen event was to create a more robust, accurate and timely color management system, and ultimately reduce the number of color quality 'holds' by 20% by year-end.  J.L. Clark National Accounts Manager Tim Marten explains, "Producing the highest quality lithography on steel is a key competency of J.L. Clark, but printing on the aluminum used for the screw cap closures presents a host of added challenges," Tim says. "Aluminum is much lighter and non-magnetic, so the material is more difficult to 'manage' on press. We're also getting many caps on a sheet which ultimately requires us to use fewer sheets to dial in the lithography. Most importantly, G3's customers are of course wineries, often family-owned, and very particular about their brand image and the impact even something as simple as the screw cap can make on the customer's perception of quality. The potential for rejection of the most minute problem is very real."

The facilitator for the 3-day Kaizen event was Americo Laires from G3. Americo's job for G3 is to coordinate all their Lean/Kaizen events, so he's done a number of these for Gallo over the past few years. Two teams – five people from G3, and 11 from J.L. Clark – participated in what everyone agreed was an extremely effective process.

The first day was spent laying out a process map of how G3's target colors are determined and maintained through the printing process by J.L. Clark. The next day was spent identifying problem areas or "log jams" in the process and defining how steps in the process could be refined to save time and improve the quality of the flat sheets that are being delivered to G3.  (Note that G3 ultimately fabricates the actual screw caps from these sheets). The Kaizen was not a finger pointing exercise: both teams worked jointly in an effort to improve the identified problem areas. Both companies recognized that each had systems that could ultimately be improved.

On the last day the teams agreed on the action items and the 'owners' for each goal of eliminating the 'log jams' and improve the overall quality of the process and finished product. Already, many of the action items recognized are complete and with an added benefit of increased communication between both companies since the event.