The new 20,000t moulding plant to be built at Bournville was in the headlines in May and the approval of the project was the result of a lot of hard work from some of my colleagues, but for most of the Manufacturing Technical team it was just the beginning. The detailed design of the plant now needed to be done and the equipment chosen and ordered, not to mention all the other small things such as flooring, lighting and fire protection.
My part in the project is to find the best equipment to palletise the finished chocolate, that is a machine (or robot) to stack the boxes of chocolate neatly, on pallets, ready for distribution to our customers. And so it was that I found myself flying into Schiphol on Wednesday lunchtime with three of my colleagues. We were met by the English representative of a Dutch palletiser manufacturer and driven to their factory for a project meeting.
There is a trend for suppliers to standardise all their equipment - the control systems, motors, drives etc. - so that they can negotiate lower prices with their suppliers. However, Cadbury's also have preferred equipment, which we hold spares for, have experience in operating and maintaining and meet our best manufacturing practice guidelines. This has the potential to lead to conflict between the customer and the supplier and so at the project meeting we discussed how to address this issue and also the best machine for our application.
In the evening we went out for an Indonesian meal (something of a specialty in The Netherlands) and ordered a Rijstafel (a set meal consisting of lots and lots of dishes), which we struggled to finish. It's always enjoyable to spend time with people from work in a social setting and the shared experiences help to create a rapport that makes us feel more of a team when we get back to the office.
The next day we continued the project meeting and had a tour of the factory and offices. This gave me the opportunity to see half built palletisers and look around all the different processes that go into making a palletising machine - metal work, painting, assembly, control etc. - all of which are very different to the processes used to make a chocolate bar.
After lunch we saw two of the palletisers in action in a Dutch clothing warehouse. It was an interesting application and it was useful to have all the functionality of the equipment that had previously been just talked about demonstrated. I also enjoyed discussing the business model of the Dutch clothing company that we were visiting - it was clearly successful. Then it was back to Schiphol to fly to Birmingham and write up the notes from this visit and follow-up the actions we'd agreed.
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