1. Organization Profile

Novembal is a prominent supplier of bottle liquid food closures. An autonomous business unit of the Sidel Group,

Sidel, one of three industry groups of Tetra Laval, is a leading provider of equipment and services solutions for packaging beverage, food, home and personal care products. Sidel has over 170 years of experience with proven expertise in blowing, filling, labeling, material-handling, end-of-line and line-engineering solutions, including an innovative focus on the factory of tomorrow with advanced systems.

For over 60 years, Novembal has been the specialist in plastic cap design and injection.
Novembal is a leading supplier of closures for the bottled liquid food market like: Water, Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD); Juices, Nectars, Soft drinks, Isotonics and Teas (JNSDIT) and Liquid Dairy Products (LDP).
Our extensive knowledge of markets, our experience and our commitment to continuous quality improvement place us amongst the industry leaders.
Our network of 3 production facilities, enable us to respond effectively to our customers’ needs anywhere in the market.
Innovation is part of our daily work and is the result from the constant attention that we give both to the market and our customers.
By offering our customers innovative solutions, we aim to maintain and build their competitive position in the market.

Plant at Rawdon Location
The plant of Rawdon, Quebec, Canada, is one of the 3 plastic cap closure plants of Novembal based in North America.
The plant is operating 7 days a week, 24h/24h, with 51 employees.
Our plant was founded in 1952, in Rawdon city, located on the north of Montréal in Lanaudière, Quebec, Canada.
In 2010, the Tetra Laval Group made the acquisition of the plant and included it in the Tetra Pak Industry Group. Then, in 2014, the Tetra Laval Group decided to attach the plant to the SIDEL Group.
The site has 5 certifications: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, FSSC 22000 and SEDEX.
The facility building of 5,205 m² is split between production, warehouse, lavatory and offices.

2. Milestones on the journey of Manufacturing Excellence

Novembal Canada started TPM implementation under the name of World Class Manufacturing (WCM). The company’s top management, together with the plant management, could see the need to improve productivity and cost by implementing a continuous improvement program based on the principles of ‘WCM / TPM’. Our efforts in TPM are aimed to make our production lines more efficient and consistent to provide a steady and reliable supply of caps following an increase of market demand, as well as, a better performing product; and by this keep our position as one of the market leaders.

In 2012, we decided to implement the TPM methods and tools and start with pilot teams (Pilot phase). We did it in cooperation with our other factory in Edison USA NJ. In the beginning and still today, this is a great opportunity to learn from each other and at the same time develop common standards and structure for the TPM work.
We realized what TPM really means and so, focus on the losses in the respective factories.
We started our expansion phase in 2015, with the launching of the FI & Cost Pillar.
In 2016, 2 new pillars were launched: Autonomous Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance.
In 2017, we decided to launch 2 new other pillars: Health, Safety and Environment and Education & Training.

The continuous progress in this TPM journey always has been supported by the pillars, these have the objective to maintain a system that can assure the continuous improvement in terms of losses eradication.
At the beginning of the TPM, an external coach (EFESO) was in charge to train, support and audit our processes. Then, in 2017, at Corporate level, Novembal decided to hire a Group Operational Excellence Manager in charge to increase the support to the 3 industrial sites. This person is based in Rawdon. In addition of this support, he is in charge to audit us every quarter, following the standard TPM audit process. This audit consists in an entire evaluation: plant, pillars and teams, with recommendations for the next step.
All pillars have a mix of suitable competences and both white and blue collars as members.
100% of the employees have roles in TPM.

Our TPM Steering Committee members are the 5 pillar leaders and have a clear ownership of the factory KMI’s, KPI’s and KAI’s.
The Steering Committee is the owner of the TPM program in the plant and supports the implementation of the continuous improvements by removing barriers and road blocks. Allowing employees to focus on identification of losses and their eventual eradication, while providing leadership, support and resources to grow the TPM culture.
The group have the mission to drive the continuous improvement process throughout the organization, by setting activities and ensuring that all resources are available to eradicate losses, supporting the factory strategy and assuring that targets are reached.

3. Benefits Achieved

Tangible results
We have been steadily progressing, we are sure that our people’s motivation, skills level and participation in improvement processes make the results and achievements possible, the TPM evolution in the factory is evident, quarter by quarter, year by year.

Intangible results
But more importantly are the intangible benefits. In today’s world, there is nothing preventing competition from producing similar products with similar equipment technology.

But organizational competence, motivation and engagement cannot easily be copied. It takes time and focused effort. We believe that TPM is the method to create a dedicated, skilled and involved organization and this is and will be our most important competitive advantage.
The evolution of the operator’s involvement is evident, during the different AM steps. Operators have developed their skills and increased their knowledge. An example is the AM tags evolution. The achievements and standards are maintained by AM teams and Daily Management System.

4. Key of our Manufacturing Excellence

We are in constant improvement, our targets have increased year by year, but our goal is the same: World Class Manufacturing. To reach it, a strong commitment from all of us is essential.
All the pillars have the responsibility with our people to maintain and get better results. Quality is one of our priorities in the current year, and of course with Safety First.
In this part of our TPM journey, it is important to identify leaders among our people, who can move their peers and show them the way to meet our goals.
In order to maintain and improve our TPM journey, we need to maintain the engagement of the organization, especially the blue collars who with higher AM steps will meet more challenges. Reward and recognition are important as well as support in skill development and coaching from managers.
As we have moved beyond “simple” losses and evident losses, the challenge is also to develop organizational skills to attack chronic and complex losses and challenge technological limits.
This will require applying more advanced analysis tools which have to be mastered.
In order to be competitive, we also need to drive productivity and foster innovative ideas.
Collaboration across the supply chain is also key for the future as our “internal” losses become smaller, we need to ensure that we focus resources towards losses further and further along the full supply chain. Apart from reducing losses, this will also further drive customer service and we will become a business partner.