Marina Hirst Tristram is executive director of operations at Tasman Bay Food Group, which manufactures and sells food products.
When and why did you decide to introduce lean thinking into your operation?
I'm not sure where I first heard about lean but I went on a trip to Japan about five years ago and was lucky enough to go to the original Toyota factory in Toyoda. I'd heard about Toyota's reputation about being super-efficient at making cars but didn't really know the background.
We got to watch the cars coming through the paint shop, with some very impressive robots, as expected, but I totally didn't expect to see one red Prius coming through, followed by one blue Corolla, followed by another different model in a different colour and so on. I was expecting all one colour, all one model. I suppose that's what initially challenged my thoughts around batch manufacturing, which is what we did and what I thought was normal.
Myself and two of our managers then went to Kiwi lean guru Bryan Travers' course and found out some more - that was about three years ago, and it wasn't until just over a year ago that we were ready to start.
What motivated you to get started?
It really came after the whole organisation got together and worked out a clear purpose and values. It turned out some of those values included 'continuous improvement' and 'striving for excellence'.