Rhodri Armour – Discovery Project Manager, Client Liaison, Solutions Generation
John Chen – Automation Engineer, Process Evaluation, Solutions Generation

Photo Courtesy of: Shivani’s Kitchen

Our Solution

Our Discovery Process focused on identifying bottlenecks in Shivani’s current process where they can improve their production: from “goods in” through the “packaged product out”. It was important to identify the quick wins or fixes that can be already done without having to invest heavily in new equipment, and to maximize use of the existing production space.

Enginuity was able to give a series of recommendations with varying time frames: immediate improvements, short term improvements (can be done <1 year), and longer term improvements (2-3 years).

This way, at varying time frames and budget allocation, Shivani’s Kitchen was able to see the full picture and get a roadmap of everything that they can do to improve their throughput in lockstep with their production scale and market demand.

Production Potential

With the recommendations in place, it is possible to double production within 6 months, and quadruple the production in a year as the existing facility is large enough to do so. Not only is it possible to automate particularly laborious tasks, but doing so can minimize cross-contamination potential when producing spice and sauces in the same kitchen. Other ways to improve packaging and loading were also identified to make the process less intense on the workers performing the tasks.

Our Recommendations to Increase Production

To improve the overall throughput of Shivani’s Kitchen, here are some of the things that we recommended:

• Revamp current sauce production process by checking for possible improvements in supply chain, identifying available equipment to speed up or scale up the process, and identifying opportunities for custom improvements where “off the shelf” solutions do not exist.
• Improve facility layout
• Usage of specific equipment for spice and sauce production
• Improve labelling process

To generate a priority for the improvements and to properly put a financial figure against manual tasks, we worked through cost of production at each stage to identify strong candidates for Return on Investment. Thus, we gave them a mechanism to calculate the following:

• The cost of existing manual tasks
• Return on Investment (ROI) when obtaining quotations for new equipment

All of this helps put a financial figure to specific improvements at different stages (ranging between manual, semi-manual, automatic) to make sure that the improvements will fit their budget allocation as well at the time should they decide to move forward with a particular recommendation.