Cross-functional Team at Coors Brewery Finds Value in Documentation, ISO 9002 Disciplines
Anticipating significant international market growth, Coors Brewing Co. assembled a cross-functional team to develop and implement ISO 9000 production and quality systems at its Memphis, TN, facility in April 1995.
Coors launched the ISO 9002 project at Memphis as a beta site to determine the feasibility and benefits of ISO for all three plants. Marsha Bichler, Quality System Manager, headed up the ISO development team.
Coors is the third largest brewing company in the U.S. and operates plants at its headquarters location in Golden, CO (the largest single-site brewery in the world) as well as in Memphis and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (a packaging facility only). Coors produces its own packaging, including cans, bottles, and package graphics and is an active recycler, recycling yeast, mash, and cans and bottles.
The Memphis plant brews Coors, Coors Light, Zima, Killian's Irish Honey, Blue Moon, Mississippi Mud, and Phat Boy, and also manufactures packaging for these products.
In 1990, Coors bought the Memphis plant, which had been built by Schlitz in 1970. Immediately, Coors retrofitted the facility to accommodate its requirements for cold sterile filling. Today the plant employs 470 people, including 350 production employees. As an interesting side note, company founder Adolph Coors and his heirs have guaranteed jobs for life to employees at the Golden facility.
At the recent WORKFORCE '97 conference sponsored by Food Plant Strategies, Bichler noted that the plant's aging workforce provided impetus to the ISO effort. "At Memphis, the average employee age is 51," she said. "In a very few years, we could lose as much as 40 percent of that workforce to retirement. We wanted to capture that knowledge to pass on to new employees coming in. We needed more and better documentation of quality systems and production, and we recognized that ISO documents can serve as excellent training tools."
In April 1995, Bichler assembled a seven-member, cross-functional ISO team, including herself, Memphis plant manager Don Brown, a packaging team leader, a packaging quality lab technician, a canned packaging utility man, a bottle label operator, and a brewhouse operator. The team selection was based on interviews.
Bichler noted that the team faced several immediate challenges including computer equipment evaluation and upgrades; labor union rules that prohibited shift overlapping by team members; and a pressing timetable to complete the project--including basic ISO training -- by May 1995; and internal auditor training by August 1995. Furthermore, all team members came from different operations backgrounds. None had worked directly together. This created a challenge to working relationships within the team.
"Our initial goal was to write a quality manual," recalled Bichler. "We needed to document all tasks in brewing, packaging and the lab to write the work instructions manual. We needed to organize all forms and job aids and to update them routinely--for example, pasteurizer settings instructions and lab equipment calibration instructions. And we needed to develop a comprehensive corrective action system, which we consider to be the backbone of the ISO system. We solicited employee ideas about how to improve handling of unfavorable production data trends and how to handle non-conforming products and customer complaints."
The project, completed at an estimated cost of $250,000, was successful even in some unexpected ways. For example, a sound system is now in place for continuous improvement and corrective action. There is better consistency and better measurement of processes, better time management, and better documentation organization. Training manuals have captured the vast knowledge of a veteran staff. And in 1997, Memphis conducted 55 internal audits, which have produced valuable knowledge to improve operations.
As indiviudals, the ISO cross-functional team members also have reaped benefits. The experience was career-enhancing. It helped the team to learn computer, public speaking, and auditing skills and to interact as problem solvers with persons of different backgrounds and viewpoints. While documenting processes and systems, rather than ISO registration, was the original goal of the project, the Memphis plant did, in fact, receive ISO registration in March 1997. The Shenandoah Valley plant is now moving toward similar status.
By Mike Pehanich