Quality Teamwork at Wakefield: Coca‐Cola & Schweppes Beverages Ltd: Wakefield Factory

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/02635579210009632
Published date01 February 1992
Pages21-23
Date01 February 1992
AuthorDavid Nellist
Subject MatterEconomics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations
QUALITY TEAMWORK
AT
WAKEFIELD: COCA-COLA
&
SCHWEPPES BEVERAGES
LTD 21
E
mphasis on recruiting high-quality
personnel provides the basis for successful
implementation of high-quality operations
in Europe's largest soft drinks manufacturer.
Quality
Teamwork at
Wakefield
Coca-Cola & Schweppes
Beverages Ltd:
Wakefield Factory
David Nellist
Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 92 No. 2, 1992, pp.
21-23,
0263-5577, © Coca-Cola & Schweppes Beverages
Coca-Cola and Schweppes Beverages Limited (CCSB) was
formed
in
January
1987.
The company is
51
per cent owned
by Cadbury Schweppes plc and 49 per cent owned by the
Coca-Cola Company. The company manufactures and
distributes a wide range of soft drink brands in Britain.
Among the brands are Coca-Cola, Diet Coca-Cola,
Schweppes Mixers, Sprite, Sunkist, Lilt, Schweppes
Lemonade, Malvern Water and Kia-Ora.
Table I. CCSB
Formed January
1987
Wakefield site identified
Strategy agreed
Planning approval
Project approval
Start on site
Building up
Start up
March 1987
September 1987
December 1987
February 1988
May 1988
February 1989
October 1989
The soft drinks market is one of the fastest growing in
the country. The demand has been rising steadily over
the past four years with market value well ahead of
traditional beverages such as tea and coffee. In addition,
soft drinks are increasing their share of total beverages
as consumers demand soft drinks more frequently than
ever before.
CCSB has recently been reorganizing its manufacturing
operation and has rationalized to the current manufacturing
bases of Sidcup, Milton Keynes, Colwall, Edmonton and
East Kilbride, with the Wakefield development coming on
stream in September 1989 (Table I). The total production
capacity is now almost two billion litres of soft drinks every
year.
Work on the Wakefield project started in May 1988 on a
greenfield site at
the
junction of the Ml and M62 motorways
in West Yorkshire (Table II). The 60-acre site is jointly
occupied by the 44,000 square metre CCSB soft drinks
factory and the adjacent 22,000 square metre Nacanco can-
making plant which provides empty cans to the CCSB filling
lines through a "hole in the wall" operation.
Automation
Wakefield is Europe's biggest soft drinks development,
the first phase consisting of two 2,000 per minute canning
lines operated by a single crew, two 300 per minute PET
lines filling and 2 litre bottles, again operated by a single
crew and a third PET line designed to produce 1 litre PET
bottles at 400 bottles per minute which came into
production in December 1990. The next phase of the
Wakefield development began with the installation of
a
third
2,000 per minute canning line
production commenced
in April 1991. The Wakefield production lines are highly
automated and were designed to operate with the
minimum of manual intervention (Table III). Full production
of
4,000
cpm was achieved with a team of seven technical
operators. The PET lines are similarly automated and are
operated by a team of seven technical operators. During
1991,
almost 600 million litres were produced by the
Wakefield factory, and it is expected that this will rise to
800 million litres during 1992.
The soft drinks are processed through an automated
processing department where raw materials received in
bulk are automatically metered into the finished product
Table II.
Sixty-acre
Site
CCSB
Nacanco
CCSB - Buildings
Nacanco
Buildings
42 acres
18 acres
44,000 sq. metres
22,000 sq. metres

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