Enterprise-Wide Lean Transformation Drives Growth & Revenue

Greenfield Global Inc. is the largest high-purity alcohol company in North America offering bulk and packaged ingredients and additives. Known for premium quality and service excellence, Greenfield's Pharmco brand is a leading choice for industries manufacturing cosmetics and for food and beverage flavoring around the globe, as well as personal care, life sciences and pharmaceuticals.

The Pharmco brand has more than 30 years of experience in producing and packaging premium industrial alcohols and solvents. Custom formulations that meet the most rigorous standards, regulatory expertise and superior logistics worldwide are a few of its competitive advantages.  Also, many of its earth-friendly alcohol products help replace chemicals derived from petroleum.

Corporate leadership recognized significant opportunities in a growing demand for Pharmco products, and the company tasked itself to grow the business with current resources by becoming more efficient, reducing waste, and developing more productive internal capabilities. To achieve these goals, leadership decided to incorporate lean manufacturing tools and techniques into production processes to improve operational and financial performance. To maximize the productivity of the company workforce, management and supervisory team members would also need to develop their skill sets further. Integrating continuous improvement and building internal capacity would be a major undertaking and a long-term process, but the principles learned and implemented would form the foundation for improving all operations within the company.

Greenfield partnered with CONNSTEP, part of the MEP National Network™, to recommend and implement an enterprise-wide lean (EWL) strategy. The EWL model worked on the company mission and vision, set strategic objectives, and help build their lean resources, including sending several employees through CONNSTEP’s Continuous Improvement Champion Certification (CICC) program. The CICC program proved instrumental in helping grow the business without adding incremental resources.

In addition to creating lean awareness and introducing the basic principles and practices of lean manufacturing, kaizens were conducted to focus on process improvement and value stream mapping traced the production flow from raw material to finished product. Management training workshops emphasized interactivity, experiential learning, conflict strategies, communication skills, time management, and understanding employee behavior.  Other components of the CONNSTEP project included improving interdepartmental teamwork and fielding a customer survey for its Pharmco brand.