January 24, 2024 Confectionary Company Unlocks Winning Strategy

Taffy Town deployed a connected worker software tool to drive culture change, transparency, communication and empower each worker.

Taffy Town is a fourth-generation candy company based in West Jordan, Utah. The company is renowned for its saltwater taffy, available in over 80 standard and seasonal flavors and shipped globally. Its 75-person workforce includes 60 shop-floor staff who work two full-time shifts across three departments. Operators cook the taffy in two departments, while in the third, they assemble and wrap products for shipping.

While the company has strong family ties, employing siblings and cousins, Taffy Town’s leaders are unafraid to break with tradition. During the pandemic, the company experienced an ongoing sales boom that strained production processes. Lead times doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled past historic norms. As a result, president and CEO Jason Glade knew he was losing sales.

“One of the important things that the pandemic revealed to me is that we can’t keep doing the business the way we’ve always done and expect growth to happen,” said Glade. “Although we make great-quality products, I felt we had to return to the drawing board and say, ‘What do we do best? Where are our gaps? What do we need to address to grow as a company?’”

Glade knew the path forward was to adopt lean manufacturing processes. He invited some consultants to the plant to evaluate how production teams could become more efficient. One of the team’s recommendations was to adopt software enabling employees to initiate and drive process improvements.

Glade and his team had heard of using a connected workforce solution, but he wanted to do due diligence. Glade contacted leaders various other candy companies and they told him about their successes in adopting a platform from QAD Redzone, including the cost savings and new revenue they drove with the solution.

Taffy Town deployed the software in October 2021 and never looked back. “This isn’t just a software solution: It’s a tool to drive culture change with transparency, communication, and tools that empower each worker,” says Glade.

What are the results?

Taffy Town created the visual factory by deploying an overhead TV on the production floor and iPads next to all production equipment. In addition, workers could access the app on their smartphones. These tools provided real-time awareness about production conditions and anomalies and access to work instructions and tools like dashboards, leaderboards, actions, issues, alerts, chats, logs, and blogs with summarized content on meetings and forums. Previously, the production team worked with 2-3 week-old reports, meaning the data was no longer relevant to current production conditions. “Now, with real-time data, we make changes on the fly,” says Glade. 

Workers hold huddles, daily operations meetings, and weekly performance improvement sessions and use chats to brainstorm improvements and share the successes of process changes.

Glade thought it would take a few weeks for employees to adopt the technology. However, within 48 hours, operators were sharing information about production runs, giving each other high-fives for great ideas, thanking others for setting up their shift for success, and taking other actions.

According to Glade, some employees hesitated to adopt the software tool because they knew they would need to change their work mindset and processes.

One of the most reluctant adopters was the head of maintenance, who told Glade, “When we put those iPads by all the equipment, operators are going to provide their complaints in real-time. This is going to be a nightmare because we’re already overwhelmed.”

Previously, operators would submit paper-based maintenance requests, which would be physically sorted on the manager’s desk. He would then use a whiteboard to list upcoming repairs.

Now, with QAD Redzone, the maintenance team can see, organize, and manage all maintenance activities in the app. The technicians can respond to early warning signs, catching equipment issues before they develop into more serious repairs. In addition, technicians can use analytics to detect repeat tickets, perform root-cause analyses, and solve underlying issues. The team has completed 775 activities, decreasing closeout time from 16 to two days.

“Before, we had equipment that we’d take offline long-term because we couldn’t diagnose the underlying problem. We were having two to three breakdowns a month—but now- we haven’t had any equipment downtime in the last three months,” says Glade.

And the maintenance manager? He became quickly became a fan when he saw how the tool enabled his team to prioritize work and prevent major repairs. In addition, his team can complete work during the day instead of coming in after hours to fix issues.

The maintenance team and operators also have a better working relationship because they collaborate on diagnosing issues and making repairs instead of pointing fingers at each other.

“We have this whole list of checks that operators go through to self-evaluate problems. So that’s done before the maintenance techs even come out on the floor. And they can review the 5 Senses data, identify anomalies, and fix things faster.’

Taffy Town focused the initial deployment on its cut-wrap department because it had lagging processes, was easy to benchmark, and process improvements would significantly boost overall throughput. The cut-wrap department ran on eight lines across both shifts.

Before the connected worker solution was deployed, the cut-wrap department averaged 45% OEE. After 90 days of using the software tool, the team achieved a 40-point OEE uplift. Taffy Town leaders helped the team improve by showing them how much time they spent cleaning machines, changing over runs, and experiencing machine downtime to see how to improve processes. Operators would make one improvement after another, and the OEE score kept rising each week.

“We had hung out at 40% to 45% OEE forever at our company, not knowing that if we made some changes, we could drive output overnight,” said Glade.

After nine months, OEE maxed at a 48% improvement. As a result of these improvements, Taffy Town is driving more throughput and has shipped more products out on time. In addition, teams have cross-trained on new responsibilities, providing Taffy Town with greater operational flexibility.

And with greater production predictability, Taffy Town has offered employees a four-day workweek, which they enjoy and which serves as a powerful recruitment tool.

Audit preparation, too, has gotten simpler. As a food company, Taffy Town contracts with a third party to inspect its processes and ensure they comply with relevant regulations.

Before deploying the technology, inspectors would come onsite for three days, and the quality assurance manager would follow up afterward with additional reports.

Now, the inspector only needs 1.5 days to review processes and data because the quality team can provide data on demand.

Glade says that boosting productivity has helped avoid the CapEx expense of opening another plant to handle business growth.

Customers are responding favorably to process improvements. Complaints have decreased by 75%, and Taffy Town recently received an A rating from a large customer due to a 99.92% service level for never-out SKUs. 

Taking an Exceptional Culture and Making It Better

Taffy Town’s leaders know that the marketplace for top talent is only getting more competitive. As a result, they focus on building an appealing corporate culture that attracts workers and makes them want to stay and develop long-lasting careers.

“Our employees are our most valuable asset,” says Glade. “You can put money into software and equipment, but these assets only become valuable when you have employees to use them. As a result, I’ve always tried to keep people here: developing leaders from within and helping people understand the value they provide in making our business run and improving our processes.”

Staff turnover has decreased by 13% with the connected workers software platform and employees recommend their friends and family for new roles when they become available.

Glade said implementing the software has been culture-changing and will facilitate growth in multiple ways – improving operational efficiency, employee development, and engagement.” He says his favorite feature of the solution is that it “gives employees a voice and enables them to be heard across the organization.”

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