Santa Maria is part of the Finnish food Company, Paulig. Santa Maria is the largest actor in the Nordic region of Mexican food (Tex-Mex)and sees its future expansion there Santa Maria has four production sites in Sweden, in Mölndal the spice and taco chips/shell factories and in the south Vadensjö and Landskrona produce Tortillas. Manufacturing Tortillas without preservatives is a challenge which requires advanced ventilation technique and expensive, complicated machinery. For the analysis was chosen a 10” Wheat Tortilla, Santa Marias second largest best seller, and one machine it’s made on. 

Manual work on a Tortilla line can be separated into two categories, preventative and corrective. In the preventive errors and faults are corrected before they happen or lead to major stops. The corrective work is bound to alarms, stops or raw material running out and need refilling. By moving one line and merging two sites the management would like the Baker to get more time available for supervision of the line rather than added corrective tasks, the management also wishes to reduce costs tied up in inventory by reducing the amount of time raw material and finished goods stay in stock. 

In the report the days in stock (DIS), value stream mapping (VSM) and Spaghetti diagrams are shown during the move and merger. One part of the report is sectioned according to DMAIC.

All analysis was made in parallel to the project without being part of it and the results reflect on this fact. The result was communicated to the management when the merger/move was completed. The value of the work and analysis was to teach parts of the organization the skill of value stream mapping (VSM), Spaghetti diagram and the advantage of working with the DMAIC methodology and show suggestions of improvement. 

The report describes that the Trågare(baker) has in fact been given fewer possibilities to supervise and increased corrective work. The production line and the design of the workplace has caused double the movement tasks. Days in stock (DIS) for the product under review have deteriorated slightly after relocation and the value stream mapping (VSM) of the production flow through the production line was unaltered.

Two improvement and one appeal was drafted.

A small program change will reduce visits to the raw material room by 50%. By using a currently empty silo for one manual ingredient several tasks can be eliminated.

Appeal to use VSM and Spaghetti diagrams in future root cause analysis of DIS and project work when trying to find improvements.