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Continuous improvement at Heatrod

This is a structured way to measure performance, capture and solve problems under the topics of SAFETY, QUALITY, COST, DELIVERY AND PEOPLE. Heatrod are active members of the Manufacturers Alliance and another member of the group, Packaging Automation in Knutsford have already implemented and seen huge benefits in adopting the SQCDP process.

After a benchmarking trip to Packaging Automation in February the Heatrod team began the process of using SQCDP boards and a short while later the management team looked at how this could start to be implemented in a controlled way throughout the rest of the business.


It was decided that to help drive this process we needed a team of staff members who felt passionate about improving the way we run our business and who are prepared to get involved and help to make things better. So, after appealing for interest the Continuous Improvement team was born at Heatrod and the founding members picked a cross functional team from the business that would play a part in the process of identifying problems and solving them in an efficient and acceptable way.

Since the team's inception they have now started to help the first department on the shop floor in implementing SQCDP as part of their daily work and the team in the base element manufacturing department start their day every day with a morning huddle around their SQCDP board and using the problem and countermeasure sheets that were provided by Packaging Automation. Members take turns in leading the daily huddle and after a few weeks of starting they could see it was going to be a really good way forward.

A follow up training workshop was kindly offered by the team at Packaging Automation and it was a valuable exercise which looked at the long term countermeasures which are being put in place by the CI team and how effective they are likely to be. This is a key aspect to SQCDP – problems get resolved by the team with a long term fix and not just a sticking plaster!

Well done to the Continuous Improvement team at Heatrod and a big thanks to Packaging Automation and the Manufacturers Alliance!!