Project: Intermediate glue manufacture for use on main product. Customer Problem: Unaccountable variation in batch manufacture combined with complicated usage leading to customer complaints and high levels of waste. Capley Consultancy: We investigated the manufacturing process talking to operators and reading the paper-based SOPs. There were over 400 raw materials and 4000 products. Batches were produced by operators often from memory or utilising similar raw materials in the vicinity rather than manufactured in accordance with the SOPs. The reason for this appeared to due to the complexity of the finished products. Solution: We reduced the complexity of the recipes in conjunction with the customer. We radically changed the making process from seven making tanks to two making tanks each with two finished product tanks feeding the production line one at a time. We installed an ASi system to reduce the downtime on the changeover. A SCADA system was installed which automatically batched the main ingredients according a recipe and prompted operators for the remaining ingredients, checking raw materials using barcodes and verifying weights automatically. Communications with the main plant SCADA kept the operators in touch with the plant requirements so that unnecessary batches were no longer made. Benefits: Improved batch consistency Reduced waste of finished batches Reduced raw material cost (Raw materials reduced from 400 to 40) Reduced raw material handling…stored locally Better process visibility Improved traceability Happy operators