Tasmanian Alkaloids 

Tasmanian Alkaloids (TA), a Johnson & Johnson company, is a fully-integrated manufacturer of controlled substances providing medicinal opiates from their own poppy varieties grown on the farms of Tasmania.  Processing results in poppy seeds for sale to the spice trade and a range of high value added Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients.  

Challenge 

TA’s primary competition comes from Turkey and India, which both have the advantage of low wage economics and substantial industrial protection.  Thus it is essential that TA retains its lead in technology and productivity to offset its higher costs.  To help ensure its leadership position, TA was seeking to deploy Process Excellence (a combination of Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Dashboard measurements) methodologies that had been introduced in other parts of the corporation, mainly in the US and Europe.  

 TA selected DeBaylo Associates to assist in this effort for its expertise in: 

     Six Sigma

            à Leadership Orientation and Support

à Yellow Belt Awareness Training

à Black Belt Training

à Green Belt Training 

Approach 

The Process Excellence effort began with a leadership retreat co-facilitated by DeBaylo Associates.  The purpose of the session was not only to orient the group to the Six Sigma methodologies, but also to be a working session for Process Excellence implementation.  A leadership roadmap was presented, high impact projects were selected, and plans were developed for PE deployment – training, monitoring and implementation.   

DeBaylo Associates’ consultants conducted both Green Belt and Black Belt training for high potential members of the staff including key managers.  Green Belt training consisted of two weeks of training separated by 4-6 weeks where the teams applied what they learned on actual projects.  Training consisted of both the softer, team based skills and, harder statistical analyses skills needed to successfully complete a project. Black Belt training added two additional weeks of skills based training and application, teaching the more advanced process and statistical analysis tools.  In both sessions, Minitab software was used to facilitate the analysis portion of the task.  

Several waves of belt training were conducted over the course of three years.  During this period, our consultants worked with the leadership team on the effective deployment of the Six Sigma tactics. An additional two-day leadership session was designed and conducted for the extended management team a year into the program deployment. This session not only reviewed the results achieved but expanded the buy-in and support needed for Six Sigma success.   

Results 

The Six Sigma program was successfully launched and is still flourishing three years later. The Managing Director commented that the true benefit of Six Sigma was not the 5 million dollars it had saved (although he is very pleased about that), but the change in attitude and mindset that has begun to transform the organizational culture – one that now embraces analysis, improvement and change.  

Some other tangible benefits achieved are the following: 

p      Reduced cycle time in the extraction batch processing resulting in 12 additional days of production annually

p      Reduced batch rejection rates due to improved quality of extraction batches (Sigma increase from 2.9 to 3.3.

p      Yield improvement in primary extraction by 10% in process breakthrough, including higher quality output.

p      Increase in production efficiency of 15% over last year in the Specialty Chemicals plant

p      In 2003, presented the Bronze level award in the Australian Business Excellence Awards