25.
We are proud of being one of the world's leading beer brewers. We believe that beer
forms part of an enjoyable lifestyle when consumed and marketed responsibly. We can
only be proud though if we continually meet our obligation to society and consumers
with regard to the responsible consumption of our beer.
Total Productive Management
Through recent changes to our corporate and
regional structure, the Executive Board has
established a new way of working; this new way
must deliver tangible results and is expected to
make Heineken a high-performance oriented
organisation. In 2004, in order to support the
company's growth agenda, three Company
Strategic Programmes were selected, including
the World Class Manufacturing Programme,
which uses the Total Productive Management
(TPM) methodology.
Our Group Supply Chain function has prepared plans
and is responsible for coordinating a wide range
of activities as part of this programme. A TPM
department has been established in the function,
while local TPM coordinators and a global external
consultant are available to help our breweries
establish TPM organisations and accelerate TPM
activities to achieve their vision and targets.
TPM centres around a continuous, consistent quest
to eliminate losses across all supply chain processes.
This is central to the World Class Manufacturing
Programme, which aims to transform Heineken into
a customer-focused and systems-orientated
organisation. One of the outcomes is the
development of a competitive environment helping
Heineken to achieve its financial goals through
significant savings.
Most of the improvement teams are currently
active in our bottling halls - analysing line
stoppages to identify performance problems, then
taking corrective action to improve efficiency. The
number of teams involved depends largely on how
long TPM implementation has been in place. The
results of any improvements - on product quality,
productivity and cost leadership, customer
satisfaction, social responsibility and organisation
and people development - are reported to Group
Supply Chain on a quarterly basis.
To date, 88 per cent of our breweries are involved
in the TPM programme and more than 200 people
have completed TPM training. As part of this
ongoing culture change, production and
engineering staff are being encouraged to work
more closely together, while greater responsibility
is being awarded to employees at lower levels of
the organisation.
A standard TPM toolbox was released in November
2005, while best practice procedures have been
identified through audits and have been included in
our knowledge management system. Savings have
been identified through the increased Operational
Performance Indicators (OPI) of our packaging
lines. Decreases in material and extract losses have
also been identified, but still need to be classified in
a more tangible way through the use of our savings
book tool.
Jaco Bakker, Manager of Safety, Health and Environment
at Heineken's breweries in the Netherlands.
Sustainable energy
As a co-product of the brewing process,
a large quantity of spent brewer's grains
are left over at the end of the brewing
process. Usually, these spent grains are
used for cattle feed. A few years ago,
Heineken carried out a research project
that enables an alternative use for spent
brewer's grains. Separation of spent
brewer's grains into three fractions - water,
proteins and fibres - allows for incineration
of the fibres with energy recovery.
"If we were able to adapt this exiting new
technology on a large scale, the brewing
industry would be nearly self-sufficient for
its energy requirements," says Bakker.
"It could very well be that a greater
independence from fossil fuels in the future
would strengthen our competitive edge
while at the same time contributing to a
slowing down of climate change. It is this
combination of doing good while doing well
that keeps my job a most interesting one."
Heineken N.V. - 2004/2005 Sustainability Report