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Sustainable Productivity Solutions (SPS) is a small company with a big mission. Their goal is to deliver operational improvements and to design what success looks like for growers and shippers along with many other food companies.
They work to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility of food chain businesses, and improve their profitability through the use of operational efficiency and process design tools.
The founder and president of SPS, Khaled Mabrouk, brings 30 years of experience in operational improvement. Khaled got his first degree in silviculture (Forestry). After realizing he wouldn’t be able to make a decent living doing that, he went into industrial engineering.
Khaled Mabrouk, founder and president of SPS
After working for a variety of industrial engineering firms across the US, Khaled shared, “During our first summer on the West Coast, my wife, who is a gifted gardener, asked me to join her on a series of nursery tours. I went along and soon realized that many farming processes were very inefficient.”
“I thought to myself, you live in the Salad Bowl of America and can help these farmers. I entered learning mode and focused solely on learning about farming.I had many farmers give me tours and educate me."
Today, Khaled’s #1 focus is on farmers on the central coast and in the central valley of California.
While the team at SPS is relatively small, they take on big challenges to evaluate how much extra revenue an organization can generate from resources like workers, land, buildings, and equipment.
“Our motto is processes plus people drives performance,” Khaled said. “When we solve problems, we know it’s important to engage the front-line people, the people actually doing the work. The more you engage the front-line, the more they will own the solution and make it stick,” he shared.
Khaled recalls one project, “We worked with a central valley farmer who grows radicchio. The Japanese market required superior quality and afforded a real premium price. But the people working the line were letting a lot of Japanese quality radicchio continue down the line to be sold in the US market."
"The solution was simple," he stated. "We used visual management. We put posters above the lines right at the place that the choice was made. On the left-hand side, we displayed the Japanese quality and those went down the left line. On the right side we showed pictures of the radicchio that stayed in the states, those went down the right line. We helped them increase the amount of radicchio that went to Japan and helped improve their margins considerably.”
One organic farmer hired them to get their "lean culture" started. "Lean thinking" is about getting rid of waste in the process; things like doing the same job over & over or doing it wrong are all considered waste in the operation. Most companies start out with 40-60 percent of waste in their processes.
To help this organic farmer, SPS went every other week and worked with different leaders & coached them on how to engage people in the operational improvement process. After transitioning their culture to "lean thinking", the VP of production noted his supervisors, who used to be quiet, were speaking up and sharing their thoughts.
SPS holds regular seminars to help businesses understand the "lean thinking" principles that can significantly impact a company.
The trainings have four areas of focus:
- Get to the root cause –take the time to understand the root cause of the problem.
- See the process – observe the work as it’s being done.
- Engage your people - look for opportunities to praise.
- Use "lean thinking" to get rid of waste
The next series on Unlocking Operational Efficiency, will be held in the Watsonville area in September 2018 in both English and Spanish versions.
