Case Study 1
The BBI Group
BBI produces and supplies medical reagents and diagnostics with multiple sites based in the UK, US, South Africa, and Sweden, BBI is owned by the UK private equity company, Exponent PE.
BBI has invested in facility improvements across sites including establishing a new headquarters in Crumlin, Wales, and are now focussing on systems and process improvements to drive business productivity and accommodate future growth.
Operations Excellence Leader and Lean BlackBelt, Paul Christopher, has developed a plan to support BBI’s strategy through introducing lean and Continuous Improvement (CI)practices into the organisation.
Viv Compton, Director, and Founder of Industry Learning Solutions (ILS), was approached to source Lean Six Sigma training that would create impact.
We worked closely with Paul to roll out Lean Six Sigma Black and Green Belt training across its UK sites which have been invaluable in helping establish a Lean foundation for the business.
BBI’s approach is to develop Lean infrastructures through both training and by implementing a ‘learning by doing’ strategy, where priority CI projects have been identified and are conducted by trainees under direction. The aim has been to allow benefits to be realised rapidly with training focussed on directly relevant projects for each site.
Project selection was made following process mapping of some key value streams against the following criteria:
Potential benefit to business
Degree of complexity and timescale
Return on Investment in short-term
Meeting Green Belt project criteria
An initial Green Belt pilot training programme was conducted with 7 candidates and successfully ran through the first half of 2019.
Project Case Study – Green Belt
John Bufton, Production Scientist completed a mapping exercise within the Enzymes production area which culminated in the following:
Project selection - Filtration
Current vs future sate mapping
Risk / benefit analysis
Technical feasibility study
Implementation and Change Control
John completed a Filtration project as part of a Green belt training which resulted in a cost avoidance estimated of £40K per annum. To further promote the initiative, results of the training pilot were presented to the BBI Board by trainees in April 2019.
“The new Green Belt team were fantastically well received by the Board” stated PaulChristopher.
BBI are committed to the further roll out of training and have now embarked on a further training initiative that will be completed before the end of 2019. “The Board has just endorsed our plans to progress with Lean roll-out in 2019-20”
BBI currently has completed 2 Black Belt and 7Green Belts courses with a further 12 GreenBelts currently in training with LTS. This has resulted in 44 completed CI projects with a further 69 projects in process across UK sites. Activities are addressing a range of material cost, productivity and quality focussed objectives which will are directly improving customer service and are contributing to business goals. “We are only six months into our Leanroll-out plans, but early results are extremely promising, and it is expected that this Lean initiative will end up becoming self-funded overtime!”
“We were delighted with ILS and this partnership. We received top quality training that was relevant to our business and a professional approach
centered around applied learning.”
— Paul Christopher, BBI