Customer

York PL, located in Bolechowo near Poznan, is Europe's leading manufacturer in the household industry. It offers more than 600 cleaning products in 75 countries around the world, employing more than 500 people in Poland, Russia and Belarus. In addition to caring about product quality, the environment and the safety of its employees, the company also prides itself on implementing a Lean culture into the organization, which is based on continuous improvement, identifying problems and eliminating them together.

Problem

The organization is made up of people. Their commitment to their individual positions contributes to the Company's lasting success. York's Board of Directors, managers and executives were looking for a way and a tool thanks to which their employees could openly and transparently report their problems at work, regardless of their severity and place of origin - it is known that often the small ones contribute to the big ones.
Managers are also keen for employees to have a real impact on the quality of their tasks, which is why they wanted to gain knowledge about how employees would like to solve the reported problems.

Solution

Accordingly, a Lean Champions Cup® workshop was organized to familiarize employees with the types of waste, inspire them to identify them as well as share solutions. During the event, everyone was invited to play a joint simulation game, which introduced them to the topic of improvements and introduced them to a new tool - the application Sherlock Waste.

Effects

The staff focused not only on the number of submissions, but also on their high quality. In the first period, 46 problems and 39 ideas were submitted. A special committee set up to prioritize the submissions decided that 26 of them would be solved later this year, while another 16 required additional analysis.

From the above results, you can see how much value asking the question can bring: What is preventing you from doing your job properly? How would you like to solve it?

The overseer of the Sherlock Waste initiative at York PL is Production Director Maciej Jerzak, who describes the cooperation with Sherlock Waste in this way :

"Through the implementation of the Sherlock Waste application, our company learned about many of the causes of frustration for our employees and gained many ideas for improving operations in the production and office areas."

York's management also decided to recognize the 3 most committed individuals, personally thank them and reward their commitment and openness to the new initiative.