Lean methodology may have gotten its start in manufacturing, but there are many examples of it working in other industries. It’s even worked for a small dairy farm and bakery in Rhode Island. Wright’s Dairy Farm and Bakery found that putting Lean to work has made their small operation that much more efficient and profitable.

Nathan Bonds, a consultant who worked with the bakery, wrote about the experience for Industry Week. He wrote that many companies worry their “custom processes won’t translate easily to Lean.”

However, when a company takes time to really learn their processes, Bonds wrote, they typically discover that “it takes less work than you think to change it.” But it’s something that requires a team effort, not the effort of just one person.

What Wright’s Dairy Farm and Bakery Does

Wright’s Dairy Farm and Bakery operates out of North Smithfield, Rhode Island. The dairy farm has been in operation for more than 100 years and remains a family-owned business.

They make their products on the farm itself. They started selling from a retail shop in the 1970s, a business that has since expanded. By the time they turned to a certified Lean professional for advice and guidance, they had a goal: to meet holiday demand, they needed to increase their daily output of cakes to 93.

After just two weeks, they had reached a point where they were already up to 75 cakes per day, an initial goal. They got there by applying Lean tools and techniques.

How the Dairy Farm Improved Operations

According to Bonds, Wright’s first decided to analyze their operation by looking for the eight wastes of Lean, one of the basic tools of Lean that is extremely effective. They found the operation had four of the eight areas of waste that can cause inefficiency in an operation.

  • Defects – Employees had to scrape extra filling off uneven cakes
  • Overproduction – Producing too many cakes too quickly caused waste that workers had a hard time keeping up with
  • Waiting – Workers often were idle when waiting on materials
  • Non-utilized talent – There was a third person in cake prep who didn’t really need to be there once all materials were in place.

Lean Tools Put To Use

After identifying the wastes, the team decided to make changes. For example, the cake prep team found they could cut wasted motion by putting spatulas and spoons on holsters or filling buckets.

Employees also were stopped from doing other tasks – such as throwing away trash – when they were supposed to be making cakes. Bonds wrote that they “now prep cakes as a surgeon or pilot does: focused, standardized and working smoothly in the right place, performing only value-added steps.”

They also used the 5S tool (sort, set, shine, standardize and sustain) that is frequently employed to eliminate waste. That led to establishing a cake-making flow that workers practiced (using a stopwatch) until they had the process down and had eliminated obstacles.

As the dairy farm moved toward its goal, employees were encouraged to make suggestions and find ways to clear obstacles from the cake prep process.

Importance of Lean Professionals

Wright’s Dairy Farm benefited from the expertise of Bonds, a project manager with Polaris MEP, a process improvement consulting company in Rhode Island. He is certified in ASQ Training and Root Cause Analysis.

Increasingly, companies are training their own employees by offering Lean and Six Sigma training. For example, a Michigan healthcare company trained its entire staff in Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Also, there are numerous stories of how the U.S. Armed Forces has made a commitment to training servicemembers in Lean and Six Sigma.

By training staff and carefully implementing the tools and techniques of Lean and Six Sigma, businesses can quickly make progress. And as the success at Wright’s Dairy Farm show, success is possible in any type of business that has a process.