Worldwide Fruit Limited is an international fruit marketing and distribution company that supplies the UK’s largest supermarkets. Worldwide Fruit have a commitment to being both sustainable and lean, to creating value for their customers throughout their supply chain.
Zero waste is one the organizations strategic pillars and Worldwide Fruit has been working with S A partners since 2011, to develop their understanding of Lean practices and processes and how they can continually improve.
Their approach to learning has been to ‘grow our own’. They have invested in training and development, using the S A partner belt system which is affiliated to Cardiff University. This ensures they are all aligned and delivering the same objectives. In 2020 there were 200 good ideas. Everyday, someone, somewhere in the business is delivering an improvement.
Fresh fruit packaging and distribution is a highly competitive and challenging market. Product management and processing is subject to high levels of waste and the speed of turnaround required to ensure products reach supermarket shelves in optimum condition requires a highly scientific approach. This coupled with staff shortages and increasing pressure from supermarkets to reduce costs led Worldwide Fruit to embark on a Zero Waste agenda. Working with S A Partners they identified a program to build capability in Lean and Continuous Improvement.
S A Partners supported the development of a Lean Training Academy which went on to deliver LCS Level 1A Lean Awareness Training to 100% of employees; and 38 LCS Level 1B Green Belt and their journey continues. This team also supported the development of a Model Line; the introduction of OEE as a key metric; Strategy Deployment through tiered meetings and the development of a new supplier framework.
Creating capability and building a culture of continuous improvement were fundamental to the deployment of the program. Whilst building lean and continuous improvement skills were important the company wanted to ensure that change was sustainable and the focus was on behaviors and not just tools.
Key actions included:
To deliver the transformation at Worldwide Fruit S A Partners supported the deployment of the Enterprise Excellence Model and framework across the business. We also worked with Worldwide to build capability and confidence across the team. More recently we have started working with Worldwide Fruit on their Digital Transformation program.
As a team we have a passion for improvement, and we enjoy working with individuals and organisations to deliver a positive sustainable impact.
