Frescura is innovation, quality, reliability
 
Managing quality with the “Toyota System”
We do not just manufacture products that are always at the top of the range but, essentially, we produce Quality, Innovation and Technology. The key to our success was when we asked ourselves, some years ago, a very simple question: “If the worldwide giants are doing it, why can't we do it too?” We were, therefore, the first in Italy and the only ones in our sector to launch the most innovative production and quality control systems, known across the world as Lean Manufacturing, Toyota Production System and Total Quality Management. The result of this huge reorganizational effort is “the utmost level of reliability and total quality”.
 
Lean Manufacturing in order to eliminate waste
In Frescura, hunting out waste is inspired by the wake-up call that is the so-called “walk of shame” because, for us, finding any kind of waste always brings us huge embarrassment. It is with great pride, therefore, that we are able to declare that LeanManufacturing, the greatest management revolution of the last fifty years, has come to Frescura. In order to create added value by eliminating waste, lean thinking has slowly but surely permeated and influenced all our business processes; only in this way have we reduced to a minimum the use of all resources, whether they be human, space, time or energy. It is with good reason that our lean challenges are based upon three basic points:

• 100% service level
• The utmost quality
• The best price

This is why Lean Manufacturing has represented, for Frescura, the result of a considerable reorganizational effort and has involved the whole company in the progressive reduction of waste inherent in the traditional method and overcome so as to tackle the production process.
 
The TPS (Toyota Production System) and Total Quality
Toyota: this global giant has taught the business world the most innovative method of organising and managing production, using the “few” resources available in the most advantageous way possible, with a single goal: to increase productivity, product quality and plant processes to the utmost.
With TPS, the Quality system introduced within Frescura was one which is universally known as CWQC (Company Wide Quality Control) which is characterised by three basic concepts:

• the customer as top priority;
• continuous improvement of processes (Kaizen);
• involving all personnel in quality and innovation.

Our ambitious goal was to reach the most inspiring level of the TPS system: the zero defects quality. We therefore introduced the Jidoka culture into the business, that is, the set of techniques which help to bring problems to the surface as a first step towards achieving the “Zero Defects” goal, meaning that faults are never allowed to become defects.
By introducing the Toyota Production System we have revolutionised our production system using a new manufacturing rule known as the Pull System, where the order, added to the production process, is “pulled” by the department downstream without being based on timescales linked to forecasting demand. In effect, in companies which adopt the old traditional system known as “push”, the semi-finished and finished products are produced exclusively for warehousing, in anticipation of customer orders.
One of the many great objectives achieved through the introduction of TPS is that it has allowed us to achieve a very high, completely constant quality level in production, by eliminating variability, with accurate control of sigma, which is the parameter used in statistics to indicate the magnitude of variability observed in a process.  Afterwards, it was extremely easy to achieve perfect efficiency in all production processes.
 
In Frescura, Quality is managed by the most advanced management tools, 
Value Stream Mapping and the DRW system
 
By introducing TPS methodology, we have activated a tool which helps us to understand and improve working processes by using all the tools and techniques of Lean Manufacturing. By achieving this objective, we have identified, demonstrated and eliminated those activities that the customer does not recognise and as a consequence is not willing to pay for, as they do not add value to the end product.
Value Stream Mapping is the starting point which helps us to recognise, first and foremost, the activities that add no value and in particular  their causes. This is a tool for strategic planning and management of change and, as we will see later on in the analysis, the method involves creating flow maps for materials and information throughout the whole process from the arrival of the raw materials to the shipping of the end product.

5Ss Technique
TPS, however, also means the “5Ss Technique”, perhaps the most well-known technique of this methodology, which bring problems to the surface and eases the flow of materials, practices, protocols and information. The introduction of this technique into our production processes has allowed us to achieve our high quality image, which is recognised daily by our customers.
 
Kaizen
Frescura’s success is due primarily to the introduction, on a company level, of the Kaizen mentality, which is focused on continuous improvement of each and every factor which, within the process, could produce or influence the true added value for our company: QUALITY.
 
Achieving another great goal: TPM(Total Productive Maintenance) methodology as an evolved concept of overall efficiency and total quality.
In our industrial evolution, maintenance has always been exceptionally important, influencing, in increasingly significant terms, our ability to compete. TPM perfectly integrates production and maintenance, having as its sole aim the drastic reduction of production losses and system optimisation.
In the TPM philosophy, maintenance never ends in the individual operational and occasional interventions, indeed, the goal is to reduce emergencies and unscheduled maintenance operations to a minimum.
The aim of this methodology is to achieve the highest possible efficiency in system use and it is implemented by introducing a complex global system of preventative maintenance which is focused upon the complete life of the systems, where the objective is to strive for “zero defects”, “zero breakdowns” and “zero losses”.
TPM philosophy is an overall mentality which involves some strongly innovative techniques of system management:

• the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) method
• the FMECA (Failure Mode Effect Criticality Analysis) technique
• the RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) technique
• the RTS (Rapid Tool Setting) technique

 
In Frescura TPM means FMECA (technique for preventing defects)
This technique, which prevents problems and defects, has enabled us to hugely overhaul our way of dealing with maintenance. By applying the RCM system, we have managed to overcome the previous concept of breakdown maintenance, leading to a concept of preventative maintenance, only then to arrive at productive maintenance and ultimately at corrective maintenance. In Frescura, a constantly efficient machine produces the maximum productivity with the maximum quality.
This enables us ALWAYS to guarantee to our customers a 100% service level, extremely high and constant quality, and zero defects in the products they purchase.
 
Maximum productivity in the RTS method
The introduction into Frescura of the RTS system has meant developing a new methodology (and also a new mentality) in order to improve set-up times. Our production departments are intertwined in a complex way with the four components (the famous 4Ms) of Japanese managerial culture:

• Man
• Material
• Machine
• Method

 
In order to satisfy the demands of customers and optimise production performance to the utmost, using the RTS method, we have created in production the ideal conditions for these “4Ms” to work with maximum efficiency at the lowest possible costs.
The RTS method is concentrated on the “Machine” component and is a methodology for improving and innovating the system by which the machine set-up is conducted.
By its very nature, the set-up must be considered as an unproductive phase in a process because it does not increase the added value of a product; it absorbs the production capacity of the plant, takes up “human” capacity, ties up the production organisation and interrupts the flow of materials. So much so that in all companies it is considered “a necessary evil”.