Colgate Palmolive Morocco Information Technology Essay

The need of Factory Performance and Reliability Standards, with the technology adopted in the factory, is to place Morocco Plant among the top ranked plants in the world in fact, the technology is set to provide a better efficiency at a better production cost while ensuring a high product-availability and an ideal response time. FP&R standards have been estimated to be completely implemented in five years starting from May 2009. Because of the beginning of the project, The Company focused on two out of eight fields included in the technology package that are: Standard Daily Meeting and Planned Maintenance.

Six months after the launch of the program, the first results start to be visible. The technology allowed mitigating the gaps existing between CPM current practices and the requirements of FP&R Standards. The early implementation of the system has contributed to reduce this gap by 70% for the Daily Standard meeting standard and by 45% for the Planned Maintenance standard.

Colgate Palmolive Company focuses on its core businesses which are manufacturing and selling Oral, Personal and Home Care Products. With an effective financial strategy, Colgate has increased its gross margin, in all factories worldwide, while at the same time reducing costs to let other innovative practices such as new product development. The latter has generated greater profitability.

This report describes all the gaps discovered is each field and how the FP&R technology has allowed the company to improve their productivity.

First, I give an overview of CPM Company. CPM is the leader on the national market concerning shampoos and the second concerning toothpastes.

Second, I define the project’s context by deeply explaining each “FP&R Standards”, going from the standard definition to the implementation phase using the FP&R technology.

Finally, I come up with a conclusion that contains some recommendations to managers.

Chapter I: CPM presentation

Presentation of CPM

CPM is a limited Company and consists of the following five departments:

The Finance Department whose responsibility is to manage the capital expenditure (purchase machinery, equipment …), deals with daily expenditure (purchase stationery, training expenses …) and runs expenses for fixed costs (rent, wages, electricity, water …)

The Marketing Department which takes care of advertising on (TV / Radio / Press), develops marketing campaigns, that are appropriate to the consumer needs (consumer survey)

The Sales Department that is regionally structured, each region is composed of three supervisors each with a sales force of 8 vendors for a total of 24 vendors on average. In turn, each supervisor with its sales force covers a modern sector and traditional sector. These two sectors are supplied and managed by the central services at headquarters.

The Technical Department that has as first role buying the raw materials used to manufacture the products and manufacturing products according to demand coming from the sales department.

The Human Resources Department which deals with Staff remuneration and payment of all administrative affairs (social security, taxes, insurance and mutual personal pension …) 

Nature of Business

The two main activities of CPM are manufacturing shampoo, that generates 80% of profit, selling toothpaste , which represents 15% of profit, what is left is shared between Home care products: softeners and dishwashing liquid. 

CPM is the leader in the domestic market on the shampoo and the second on the toothpaste. The battle for market share with competitors is at: 

Shampoo with brands such as: Head & shoulders / Pantene 

Toothpaste with brands such as: Signal 

CPM Company is present in several markets of consumer goods. Indeed its wide product range covers both Personal Care as the Home Care. 

Colgate-Palmolive operates in the market of Oral Care through Tonigencyl and Colgate toothpaste and Colgate toothbrushes. In addition the Company has a strong presence in the market with shampoo brands: Cadum, Alert and Palmolive.

Colgate-Palmolive markets including Palmolive shaving cream. For the Home Care, CP offers a wide range of products such as cleaners Ajax and Palmolive dishwashing liquid, in addition, to Soupline a softener for laundry.

History

Colgate in Morocco was founded in 1957, 52 years ago, under the name of Cadum Palmolive primarily to market products imported from France. The labor force at that period was just 17 workers and products were mainly soap, toothpaste and shaving-cream. 

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Three years after its creation in Morocco. CP starts the local manufacturing of soap, toothpaste and shaving-cream.  In 1970, Colgate began the manufacturing of shampoos. In 1972. Cadum Shampoo is marketed and is still the undisputed market leader of shampoos in Morocco. 

Organizational Structure

The two following figures represent two organizational structures, the first one illustrated, in figure I.1 p.15, shows the structure from a general view, whereas the second, figure I.2 p.16, illustrates the structure in its more specific representation.

Figure I.1: Executive Board Organization Chart(Company’s Website)

FigureI.2: Factory Organization Chart(Company’s Website)

CPM Values

As listed in this company’s website:

“Our three fundamental values-Caring, Global Teamwork and Continuous Improvement-are part of everything we do”

“Valuing Colgate People”

“Becoming the Best Place to Work”

Standards Description

The Colgate Factory Performance & Reliability (FP&R) standards require the implementation of a series of Standards aimed at increasing plant capability, responsiveness and ensuring available capacity.

An assessment was done at earlier stage to evaluate the work that should be done and to evaluate the targeted fields to focus on. Among the eight modules of FP&R Standards, two were really in need of improvement. This is why the company has decided to start with the two following modules:

Daily Standard meeting

Planned Maintenance

Autonomous Maintenance

Planned Maintenance

Management Systems

Productivity and Continuous Improvement

Production Planning

People Capability

Standard Daily Meeting

Every Colgate Focus Factory/Facility should have a Standard Daily Meeting (SDM) process in place to review KPIs, prioritize issues and drive factory continuous improvement (CI) and reliability, as well as coordinating level teamwork.

The SDM agenda should review the defined Plant Floor Indicator Metrics for a Focus Factory/Facility that highlight production issues/events impacting throughput.

The structured SDM agenda should enable:

1) Identification of up to 3 critical issues/events from the previous day,

2) Assignment of accountability for follow-up outside the meeting and

3) Discussion of resolution on previously identified items with a high level of results-oriented focus.

The SDM is a problem-solving process designed to identify and resolve production issues/events by engaging people at the appropriate organizational level, with the goal of improving production throughput. Each day, the SDM targets the 3 most critical issues/events, understanding that completely correcting those will have significant impact on ongoing performance.

SDM has a lot of benefits like obtaining immediate, visible performance improvements, differentiating between problems that are operational in nature (local problems) and systemic problems. Systemic problems are problems that are either recurring problems or problems that require resolution by involving people and processes outside the boundaries of the Focus Factory/Facility. It determines who should solve the problems and assigns ownership of the problems to specific individuals. In addition to the fact it makes individuals responsible for the analysis and complete resolution of issues.

If a Focus Factory/Facility determines a need for additional agenda items, these would be deemed to be outside the SDM agenda and are to be completed either before or after the SDM and should include only the people necessary for those topics

Planned Maintenance

All facilities should develop and implement a Planned Maintenance System, where assets are proactively and effectively maintained to support operation/production plans by ensuring required levels of safety, quality, availability, output capacity and customer service. Maintenance plans should be developed for Focus Factories, Central Maintenance, Utilities, Warehouses, Laboratories, Offices, etc.

Effective Planned Maintenance eliminates/prevents equipment failures and extends equipment life expectancy. Maintenance costs and downtime should decrease when an Effective Planned Maintenance Program has been implemented.

FP&R Technology

In this chapter, we will identify gaps in the requirement of the four standards addressed in this project and explain the actions that we took to reduce those gaps.

The last assessment done for the four standards is represented in the following table:

The Standard

Rating

Planned Maintenance

1,40*

Standard Daily Meetings

1,80*

Table III.1 May 2009 Assessment (*rating is out of 4)

Standard Daily Meeting

Gap Identified in SDM

The Standard Daily Meeting is the most important standard, because, it tackles the plant’s daily problems. The person responsible for SDM at CPM used to have many Excel files, each file was dedicated to a specific department, and was containing historical data specific to that department. Before, each SDM, The manager has to collect from the various files all “Open Issues” that will be discussed during the SDM. Once an issue has been “Closed”, He has to look back for the issue on the set of files to make the required changes. Moreover, Key Indicator Performance (KPI) weren’t computed and if so they were misunderstood.

Solutions to make SDM more efficient

The FP&R technology has set one common platform that gathers all the issues from the various departments. It generates a database that will enable its user to extract whatever information he wants. The database is composed of 4 modules that are linked into one Access switchboard.

The first Interface enables the user to Edit Issues, the manager can Add/Delete/Modify/Save the changes at any record. The technology introduces the concept of “On-time closure”, that represents how efficient they are in closing issues with respect to deadlines. The Checkbox is automatically checked if the deadline is less than the rising date and the status is “Closed” this function is generated through SQL.

The second interface enables the user to print all kinds of needed reports. Those reports can be generated by category, by date, by Responsible or by keyword. Keyword is a new concept to retrieve recurrent problems by entering a String. All the four criteria are printed with respect the Status or not it depends on the need.

The database is designed in such a way that the user can’t enter an incompatible data .Almost all the fields are Combo Boxes, Dates are with Input masks to prevent from Errors and finally conditions are set in “Valide If” Menu to ensure the good use of the program..

Planned Maintenance

Gap Identified in Planned Maintenance

The planned maintenance program has the lowest grade in the last assessment among all standards. This is due to machines downtimes, and spare parts management system.

Solutions to make Planned Maintenance more efficient

Concerning the spare parts management problem, the manager responsible for the breakdowns reporting was also confused between the numbers of files he has to handle. He was organizing his files per machine 8 machines, for each machine he reserved a file for the shift number (1, 2, 3) then for each shift number a file for the team leader (3 team leaders) It was really hard for him to recognize in which file he will enter the Breakdown Duration.

The FP&R module has proposed a program able to record all the downtimes with their causes and the person in charge of the fixing the tools. In addition, it prints reports by all the criteria needed.

The other major issue is about Spare Parts warehouse having three files one for inventory, a second one for Spare Parts Reception and a third for Spare Parts Use. Updates were done manually between files, the complexity and the diversity of Spare parts were making things very difficult to do. Each Item was identified by a code.

The FP&R technology permits to control the spare parts in a very interactive form. it updates the quantity that enters or Exits from the Spare Parts Warehouse. It is related to the inventory table. The Undo is in case there is a mistake in the entry in this case, the transaction is canceled, and no change is done in the inventory. The transaction is canceled also when the quantity requested at exit is less than the quantity in the inventory.

Spare Parts Management system allows:

Accurate replenishment parameters

Pre-staging of materials for scheduled maintenance

Optimum spare parts stock level

Identifying and maintaining slow moving inventory

The Standard

Rating

Planned Maintenance

1,40*

Standard Daily Meetings

1,80*

Table III.1 May 2009 Assessment (*rating is out of 4)

The Standard

Rating

Planned Maintenance

2,03*

Standard Daily Meeting

3,06*Table III.2: Summary of the Last Assessement(*rating is out of 4)

CONCLUSION

The FP&R technology has allowed a smooth implementation of the standards. The technology was actually a change in the working process, which represents an important challenge for managers.Top and middle managers should be aware of people’s strengths and weaknesses. Colgate Palmolive managers are trying to make the system as much familiar as they can, they are dealing by resolving each employee issues , because they believe that employees are different in terms of their preoccupations , matters and hopes. The more they understand people’s needs, the better they will be able to manage change.

Supervisors and employees have to go for trainings to be more familiar with change. Implementing a new technology not an easy staff because a strong resistance to change is often rooted in deeply conditioned or historically reinforced feelings. Patience and tolerance are required to help employees in these situations to see things differently. Bit by bit.