CAMT Helps Dawn Foods Become Best Performing Plant
Dawn Food Products got its start nearly a century ago when two bakers opened a small bakery in Jackson, Michigan. This little bakery quickly became famous for its donuts. Soon bakers from other parts of the country wanted the formula. Rather than give the formula away, the unassuming entrepreneurs decided to blend the secret recipe themselves and sell the mix to other bakers. By 1920, they were selling more mix than donuts, so they sold the bakery and began the nation's first industrial bakery mix company.
Today Dawn Food Products is distributing their bakery products throughout North America, Mexico and Central America, the UK and Europe, and many other countries worldwide. Dawn has more than 40,000 customers, offers over 4,000 products, and includes over 40 locations with 3,500 Team Dawn members worldwide. Ranked as the fourth largest facility out of a total of eight, the Denver facility employs nearly 150 individuals with $112,000,000 in annual sales.
Dawn's Denver facility embarked on a company-wide Lean Manufacturing training program designed to eliminate non-value added activities in the fall of 2007. CAMT helped Dawn identify and apply for multiple grants to contribute to training and implementation costs, and then built a comprehensive continuous improvement plan involving all departments of business.
In 2008, the Denver Dawn facility production levels increased, due in part to general business growth and also to the addition of a new canned product, making the Lean continuous improvement program even more necessary. With CAMT's help, Lean measures were put in place to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Dawn identified key individuals that would be trained on the basics of Statistical Process Controls, Value Stream Mapping, along with two Kaizen Events (one-week rapid improvement events) in focused production areas. These programs identified potential process improvements and then put them in place with significant success.
These activities allowed Dawn to greatly reduce operating costs, making the Denver facility a viable option for additional production needs. Due to these efforts and the ongoing partnership with CAMT, the Denver site has been recognized as the most improved and best performing plant, a true benchmark for Dawn Food Products.
Results:
- $1,000,000 in Increased Sales
- $3,500,000 in Retained Sales
- $905,000 in Cost Savings
- 17 Jobs Created
- 10 Jobs Retained