CREVE COEUR, MO, and CHICAGO, Aug. 5, 2008 (PRNewswire-FirstCall) - Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation's Chesterfield, MO, corrugated container plant has become the first facility in Kiwiplan history to achieve a 90 percent Continuous Automatic Scheduling Environment (CASE) utilization within two months of implementing the Kiwiplan plant scheduling system.
Since implementing Kiwiplan, the Chesterfield plant has increased productivity by approximately 23 percent.
The Kiwiplan system focuses on improving customer service, which is an integral part of Smurfit-Stone's overall supply chain excellence strategy.
"Our Chesterfield plant is taking full advantage of Kiwiplan's system automation to improve scheduling effectiveness and customer service," said John Knudsen, senior vice president of manufacturing for Smurfit-Stone's Corrugated Container Division. "We expect to see continued performance improvement this year and further improvements in 2009 as we roll out the system to other facilities."
The CASE component of Kiwiplan is designed to automatically schedule the corrugator, issue programs and print working documents, leaving more time to focus on customer needs, quality functions and process improvement.
Smurfit-Stone is in the initial stages of a three-year rollout of Kiwiplan to its corrugated container operations. In addition to the box plant in Chesterfield, MO, Smurfit-Stone has implemented Kiwiplan at its plants in Ft. Worth, TX; Covington, GA; North Chicago and New Lenox, IL; and Montgomery, AL; and is in the process of introducing it at plants in Germantown, WI; Philadelphia and Aston, PA; Winston-Salem, NC; and Cerritos and Santa Fe Springs, CA.
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