Superior Lithographics

Zavanta Software aligns with principles of lean manufacturing.

 

“Zavanta helped us take the next step to establish a solid foundation for our SOPs. The software guided us on shaping a fundamental system that is organized and practical.”   

-Jeff Ku, President & COO 

 

Our Client: Superior Lithographics

 Superior Lithographics manufactures folding carton packaging for the food service, food processing, and consumer packaged goods industries. Folding cartons for indirect and direct food contact includes packaging for frozen foods, dry foods, and beverages, along with consumer products. In addition to folding cartons, production capabilities include top sheets and litho labels for conversion by corrugated box plants using high-speed late-model lithographic offset printing presses along with die-cutters and folder-gluers. The company serves the West Coast packaging market. It was started in 1982 and now operates 24/7, employing over 120 team members.

For 23 years, Superior operated as a conventional printer under an "old-school, top-down" management style. In 2011, a Printers' Continuous Improvement conference inspired a transformation that made Superior what it is today: a continuously improving organization focused on respecting its people, its suppliers and its customers.

Vision

"To be the most respected independent printer with the happiest team members in the western United States."

Values 

Safety, Respect, Quality, Communication, Teamwork, Creativity

Business Challenge 

Prior to implementing Zavanta, Superior Lithographics utilized paper binders for their policies and procedures. It’s not surprising they found this to be inefficient and hard to manage. There was no way to control who had the latest version, and they lacked a system that supported continuous improvement.

Focus on Lean Manufacturing Principles 

Superior Lithographics has a company-wide focus on lean manufacturing, which requires standardization of procedures. Implementing a policy and procedure software is a natural extension of lean, which also focuses on things such as job satisfaction, positive results, efficiency, and satisfied customers. 

Zavanta’s Role with Quality and Audits

 

Quality

This initiative starts with one of Superior Lithographics’ core values: quality. Lean principles and quality go hand-in-hand because both require standardization of work.  You need good policies and procedures and consistent documented activities.

 

“It’s reassuring to have a good repeatable system that has controls in place. It provides confidence in our process when we’re audited by customers or third parties. It also makes sure our team members are always viewing the latest and greatest procedure so there is clarity in instruction and expectations.” Jared Rounsevell, Director of Operational Excellence

 

Zavanta also plays a role in the core value of creativity. They have an online suggestion box and which allows any employee the power to suggest an idea. These ideas could lead to a change in procedure or the creation of a new procedure in Zavanta. The company’s dedication to creativity also supports continuous improvement with feedback from the frontline employees.

 

Audits

Superior houses all of their work instructions, policies, and core documents in Zavanta. They are audited for food safety certification every year. During recent audits, they have been able to show the auditor everything they need via Zavanta quickly.

“There's a power to the efficiency of pulling up an online repository of documents and navigating it quickly. The power of showing our system and its controls allows us to demonstrate that we have a repeatable process. People can't make changes without proper approval. That goes a long way.” 

 

Benefits of Using Zavanta

Superior Lithographics has over 300 process and procedure documents in Zavanta. This includes topics like good manufacturing practices (GMP) policy, quality control procedures, and various reference guides that include tables and diagrams with defined parameters for given tasks.

Customized Dashboard and Streamlined Review and Approval Process

Zavanta allows all users (admins, contributors, and users) to customize their individual dashboards to include documents and widgets most useful to them. As an administrator of Zavanta, Jared has taken advantage of this so that he only sees what he wants. This includes any process document that needs his review, approval, or publishing. He can also see where relevant documents are throughout the full lifecycle.

Up to 12 different team members may be writing or updating processes and procedures at any time of the year. Writers might include production supervisors, manufacturing managers, equipment trainers, etc.  He simply checks his dashboard several times a week for notifications like “pending quality review” or “approved ready to publish.” The dashboard view makes it easy to act and keep the process moving. This is much more efficient than using emails to go back and forth between all the writers and contributors.

Improved Quality Metrics

Standardizing processes and having repeatable procedures has positively impacted meeting various quality metrics. Superior Lithographics measures things like customer complaints (external issues) or internal quality issues that they must fix that require an additional spend.

Their KPI goals are to have less than 1% of jobs have a minor quality complaint, and less than 0.5% have a major complaint. They track per job if they must issue a credit or replacement. All complaints are investigated to find the root cause and develop a corrective action plan. This may result in a procedure change or a brand-new procedure in Zavanta. They also do their due diligence to understand if they properly trained the procedure, so employees have clarity.