Issue link: https://industrialengineer.epubxp.com/i/826827
50 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine Sunset Mastronardi Produce is a third generation, family-owned greenhouse supplier in North America. The company grows, packages and distributes greenhouse-grown veg- etables for major grocery retailers. With more than 60 years in the greenhouse industry, the company was seeing a yearly 15 percent growth and a steady decline in production capacity. After the company started making roughly $1 billion annually, company leaders real- ized that they were still running operations like a mom-and-pop shop. Carlos Collier, head of the continuous improvement team at Sunset, explained, "Our sales and market- ing had outstripped our operational capacity to the extent that we were causing some self-inflicted wounds." In 2016 the company became interested in achieving operational excellence through lean methodologies and enlisted the help of the University of Michigan's Tauber Insti- tute for Global Operations Team program, which pairs a team of graduate students with a sponsoring company to complete a 14-week project that explores innovations in opera- tions and manufacturing. The students then enter their results into an annual contest for the institute that awards students $40,000 in scholarships. This project focused on Sunset's largest distribution center, a 380,000-square-foot facility in Livonia, Michigan. The team and the company wanted to make immediate improvements in customer service, product utilization and cost. Three students, Eun Jung Shin and Vivek Vijayan, who both hold a master's degree in supply chain management, and Maxwell Boykin, who holds a master's degree in indus- Kaizen in the greenhouse Solutions in practice case study Maxwell Boykin (from left), Eun Jung Shin and Vivek Vijayan visit a Sunset Mastronardi Produce facility in Michigan.