May 19, 2022 WCO Journey Reaps Rewards

Swire Coca-Cola’s TRACC-powered WCO program results in over 400% ROI and paves the way for a digital future.

Swire Coca-Cola China, the world’s fifth largest Coca-Cola bottling partner, has achieved over 400% ROI and saved $16 million since the inception of its TRACC-powered World Class Operations (WCO) program in China. Developed by global continuous improvement leaders, Competitive Capabilities International (CCi), TRACC is a continuous improvement solution that enables manufacturers to drive and sustain world-class business performance. The success of the WCO program has made Swire a global benchmark for continuous improvement and has paved the way for a seamless digital transition.

Swire began its WCO journey in 2009, with the goal of improving production efficiency to meet increasing consumer demand. TRACC Best Practices – including 5S, Visual Management, Teamwork and Focused Improvement – were initially implemented at two pilot sites: Zhengzhou and Nanjing. Within 18 months, performance had stabilized at both plants, and quality and equipment issues had been resolved. Spurred on by the impressive results of the pilot program, Swire management opted to implement TRACC at 10 other sites, with resultant improvements in line efficiency, quality, cost, delivery, safety and morale. By 2015, all of the sites had reached a world-class maturity level above 3.0.

Says Graeme Faulkner, VP, CCi Greater China: ‘’Swire Coca-Cola continues to influence other businesses to embark on or enhance their World Class Operations journey. Through site benchmarking visits, organizations witness the standards of practices and performance achieved by Swire Coca-Cola, and the capabilities and passion that are so evident in these interactions. These successes have been sustained by the culture that has been driven by the group’s leadership teams. CCi is very proud of the partnership with Swire Coca-Cola and of their TRACC implementation success.”

Luohe, one of Swire’s newer plants, was the first site to introduce an ambitious vertical integration consisting of the TRACC Solution (WCO), SAP information management system, and Coca-Cola’s Kore quality system. The result exceeded expectations, with the typical onboarding period of just over a year shortened to three months. This vertical integration approach was so effective that Swire also applied it to two new bottling plants in Fuzhou and Foshan.

With a strong continuous improvement foundation firmly entrenched, Swire began the search for manufacturing intelligence software that would drive fast, flexible changeovers on high-speed production lines. The leadership team settled on LineView, a line monitoring system that presents actionable information in an easy-to-read format, enabling rapid decision-making.

TRACC’s interface with LineView has resulted in significant improvements in Swire’s visual management system. Kanban boards are more interactive, and teams get a real-time overview of every shift, hour by hour. The system also indicates how many unplanned and micro-stoppages the lines experience. Team leaders then export this integrated data to the TRACC Platform to generate a performance report and subsequent improvement action plan.

Swire also collaborated with automation company, Siemens, to configure the production lines of more bottling plants in the group with automatic data acquisition and analysis systems as part of the process to build a digital operating system through WCO.

Since the implementation of the TRACC-powered WCO program, Swire Coca-Cola has achieved the following results:

• ROI exceeded 400%
• Savings of $16 million
• Over 1 000 manufacturing and supply chain profit improvement projects (PIPs) completed
• Net line utilisation on the first demo line increased by 8% within three months
• All plants achieved a world-class maturity level of above 3.0 within 6 years
• Multiskilled employees increased from 15% to 40% within 5 years
• Swire Coca-Cola in Luohe is the first ever plant to successfully integrate WCO vertically
• Some plants at maturity level 4.0 and building a digital operating system (DOS)

In the last few years, Swire’s bottling plants in China have increased to just over 20. The central services team of the Swire Group – known as ‘Sbox’– is a team of WCO experts and certified trainers that acts as an internal WCO consultant team. The team uses the TRACC Solution to build internal capability through WCO, thereby reducing dependence on external consultants.

Swire hosts supplier summits to encourage the exchange of WCO ideas and success stories. Apart from the standard evaluation criteria, Swire now also expects suppliers to undergo maturity assessments to stimulate their ability to pursue world-class excellence. The group extended their WCO initiative to 12 suppliers in 2019, during which time they completed 25 performance improvement projects. The results were impressive and included a reduction of 490 tons of carbon dioxide emissions and the lowering of water consumption by 11 000 tons.

Says Xiaodong Zhang, GM, Supply Chain, Swire Coca-Cola, China: “Swire’s mission is to become the best employer, the best business partner, and the best corporate citizen. In this regard, supplier cooperation plays an indispensable role in our end-to-end value chain.”

Issued by:
Isabella Meyer (External Communications Manager)
Competitive Capabilities International
Cell:  +2783 601 9097
E-mail:  imeyer@ccint.net

About Competitive Capabilities International (CCi)   
Established in 1987, CCi is a privately held, global company that enables organizations to deliver sustainable results across the supply chain through a continuous improvement solution called TRACC. With its core experience residing in manufacturing and supply chain best practices, CCi’s goal is to ‘unlock greatness’ in organizational capability through proven experience in World Class Manufacturing (WCM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Six Sigma, Lean and Supply Chain Optimisation.  

Learn more: 
ccitracc.com

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