Kellogg’s Kaizen Operations Improvement Plan

Kellogg’s Kaizen Operations Improvement Plan

Mr. Bryant,

        In order to maintain competitive priorities and remain above the competition in the global market, industries have to continuously improve manufacturing system processes. Competition and ever increasing customer satisfaction standards has been shown to be the force behind performance improvement by companies (Singh & Singh, 2015)

         In June 2010, Kellogg Co. recalled about “28 million boxes of cereal largely marketed to children out of concern that unpleasant smells and flavors emanating from the boxes’ plastic packaging can cause nausea and diarrhea” (Pollak, 2016). Then in October 2012, Kellogg said “it would take a charge of up to $30 million to cover the recall of Mini-Wheats cereal in the U.S. due to possible contamination by pieces of metal mesh” (Pollak, 2016). That year Kellogg ended up spending around $100 million to fix its supply chain, which had suffered deep cost cuts, resulting in several manufacturing facilities overworked and too little of a work force to oversee operations. On September 19, 2016, “Kellogg Company voluntarily recalls limited number of Kellogg’s® Eggo® Nutri-Grain® Whole Wheat Waffles due to potential health risk” (Kellogg Company, 2016). Kellogg recalled the waffles because of the possible contamination with Listeria Monocytogenes which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in children or elderly adults. These recalls demonstrate Kellogg’s recent quality struggles. The company will have to make some major changes in the years to come to be able to compete against their strong competition.

        This paper is to show how using the Kaizen method, Kellogg’s will be able to maintain competitive priorities and remain above the competition in the global market, industries have to continuously improve manufacturing system processes.

Sincerely,

        Kaizen a Japanese management concept for incremental improvement. It means continuous improvement in personal life, home life, social life and working life – a way of life philosophy. When used in business terms and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to continual improvement across all functions involving all employees –managers and workers alike (Masaaki, 1986). Kaizen focuses on small, gradual, and frequent improvements over the long term with minimum financial investment and with participation by everyone in the organization (Collier & Evans, 2015).

        Kaizen concept helps not only to reduce the costs but also improve the quality of the products produced and sold to the customers. Through good housekeeping employees and employers acquire and practice self - discipline. Another important notion of this concept is standardization. Standards are the best way to do the job. Products are results of progress and at each stage of this progress standards need to be maintained in order to assure quality. "Kaizen" is the concept that needs to be studied and adopted by western style managers if they want to stay competitive in quickly developing global market (Masaaki, 1986).

In recent years, Kellogg Company has obtained some negative reputation. In 2016, Eggo Nutri-Grain Whole Wheat Waffles were recalled on the grounds that they might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. It's not the first time the company's waffles have been contaminated, the Georgia Department of Agriculture detected listeria on buttermilk Eggos back in 2009, prompting a similar recall (Rogers, 2016). Also in 2016, two varieties of Bear Naked® granola was recalled because they contain ingredients made from sunflower seeds distributed by its supplier, SunOpta, that have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2016). Before the major products were recalled in 2016, Special K Red Berries had been recalled in 2013 on the grounds that glass pieces were found by customers. In 2012, Kellogg's needed to recall some of their products such as Frosted Mini-Wheats, Bite Size Original and Unfrosted Bite Size since there were metal residues in the products (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2016).

Listeria monocytogenes is commonly found in soil and water,” most people contract the bacterium through tainted foods (Rogers, 2016). In Kellogg’s case of the Eggo contamination, the issue is that listeria not only lives but thrives in the cold. Robert Tauxe, who helps lead the foodborne-diseases division at CDC stated “It likes places that are cold and wet and where there is something it can grow on. Unfortunately, food factories with good refrigeration systems are a place listeria is known to hang out. It takes some care and it takes specifically looking for it and disinfecting when it is found. It is a challenge to many food factories. (Andrews, 2016)”

Process Improvement

Description of the Key Challenge

        Kaizen is the appropriate way in which Kellogg can turn their organization around. In order to pull off the paradigm shift in their performance using the kaizen exercise, the company needs to find a way to enhance the improvement of the quality of their products in order to mitigate the numerous customer complaints that have been witnessed in the recent past. Quality improvement is premised on all the four essential useful territories of an organization which includes marketing, finance, operations and human resources.

In order to ensure that the quality of their products is improved, the organization needs to ensure that they periodically review their sanitation protocol. Application of this kaizen technique would ensure that Kellogg has an upper hand compared to the rest of their competitors.

With Kellogg being among the best in the business, the overconfidence made them lose touch with the reality and not channel their energy and resources on the improvement of the quality of products that they released to the market. This led to the recalling of some of their major brands and numerous complaints from the customers. From the foregoing, there was an urgent need to institute a framework that provides frequent checks and balance in order to confirm the quality of the products that are purchased by the customers. This was a very important area for Kellogg since they deal with food stuff and customers were very sensitive (Kelloggs, 2017).

In order to align itself with the kaizen exercise, Kellogg needs to enhance their quality management techniques in order to avert the customers’ complaints and recalls on their products. The company has been releasing very poor quality products lately that contain some foreign materials that are likely to affect the health of the consumers. This laxity on the production and quality assurance departments has led to negative publicity towards the company and has driven drastically to a decline in their sales.