Sustainable transformation
stemming from the shop floor

“You’ll never change your life unless you change something you do daily.” This well-known quote by John Maxwell rings true in the context of our shop floor management.

We began with a small pilot of an interactive and inclusive program we call Shop Floor Transformation Initiative (SFTI) in one of our production blocks in December 2018.

SFTI is a ground-up transformation initiative where associates at shopfloor are empowered and engaged as a cross-functional team to achieve collective goals. The program systematizes a set of processes through which team members monitor and self-evaluate their progress towards accomplishing pre-set goals on a daily basis.

The success of the pilot encouraged us to expand the initiative progressively. In the little over two years since inception, SFTI has grown to an organization-wide initiative spanning our entire manufacturing operations across production, engineering, and warehouse, and has also been fully deployed in our R&D Lab operations.

SFTI has made shop-floor communication more regular, focusing on immediate problem solving, providing a platform for setting productivity expectations while keeping our operations audit-ready, and contributing to manufacturing capability and process innovation.

In line with the Kaizen approach, it encourages shop floor associates to share improvement ideas for Efficiency and Productivity Enhancement, Safety Compliance, Upkeep and Maintenance and Harmonized way of working.

The Grass Root Teams identify opportunities for improvement. The Leadership team provides constant support with appropriate rewards and recognition. Housekeeping as per norms makes the location audit-ready at any time.

The upshot of SFTI has been sustained improvement in PQCDSM (Productivity, Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety and Morale). Further, the Initiative helps to build a culture of flexibility and responsiveness in Manufacturing through implementation of 5S at the Shop Floor, monitoring and correcting abnormalities, unsafe conditions / acts if any, making cGMP observations, recording Batch Cycle Time (BCT), and Batch Charge Frequency (BCF), all of which are critical for productivity enhancement.

Beyond measurable metrics, SFTI imparts intangible, intrinsic values such as a spirit of ownership and collaboration, which are core values at Sai Life Sciences.

Other positive outcomes include effective resource planning and rapid and structured information flow among shop-floor employees. From a Lean manufacturing perspective, benefits include reduction in pending Job Orders through close tracking and monitoring with AET and SET boards, and overall cost improvement.

Watch this video to know more.