Munchee wins at inaugural National Chamber Business Excellence Summit
View(s):Munchee, the flagship brand of Ceylon Biscuits Limited (CBL), won Gold at the maiden National Business Excellence Summit 2014 (NBES) organised by the National Chamber of Commerce.
Held recently at the BMICH, the event’s theme highlighted ‘Business Excellence for Global Competitiveness’ with an objective to encourage and enhance the level of excellence in Sri Lankan organisations.
Munchee’s unique ‘Swarna Shakthi’ Quality Circle secured the Gold award for the “Quality and Productivity Excellence Stream” category, the company said in an announcement.
CBL subsidiary companies Convenience Foods (Lanka) PLC and CBL Exports (Pvt) Ltd also won the Silver and Bronze awards, respectively.
Imal Fonseka, CEO said “Following our Chairman’s mantra where ‘Quality is a Habit’ we are also driven by the astute leadership capabilities of our Board of Directors and the talent of our Senior Executives. These awards presented at operational level motivate all our employees from the factory level to the senior management and endorse CBL as a great place to work.”
“Spearheading CBL’s efforts towards continuous quality improvements and resource sustainability is their distinct Munchee Production System (MPS), encompassing worker best practices for employees to go beyond given targets and achieve continuous improvement through proper resource allocation and enhancing productivity,” the statement said.
The winning ‘Swarna Shakthi’ Quality Circle was chosen through an internal competition to mark ‘World Standards Day’ where cross functional teams throughout the group participated in production and quality improvement projects. Through certificates, ongoing training opportunities and cash awards the workers were continuously encouraged and empowered.
According to Nilanthi Ekanayake, Chief Lady Supervisor “The team was formed voluntarily and engaged in brainstorming and concluded ‘wrapper waste’ as a recurrent problem at factory level. Over a period of six months quality tools were employed and sufficient data collected to formulate solutions.
Through their untiring efforts cost reduction was achieved.”
Operational staff looked at both practical and proactive ways, their job involvement, available environmental resources and applied tools and techniques such as TQM, TPM, TPS methods for appropriate solutions.