Jotun is a worldwide producer and supplier of paints, coatings and powder coatings, with a global reputation for excellence and innovation. Manufacturing Digital talks to Richard Chapman about the company
By Jessica Summers
Rain, heat, sun, and cold – every day the powerful forces of time and weather pose a threat to valuable property. Developments in chemical engineering have created coating solutions which serve as a tough decorative barrier between valuable property and the corrosive effect of time and the elements. Today, increasingly sophisticated combinations of binders, solvents and pigments provide the world’s industries and homeowners with access to quality coatings in an infinite spectrum of colours.
Decades of investment and research in development have made Jotun a worldwide market leader in the production and supply of paints, coatings and powder coatings for the marine, decorative and protective sectors. The company has not only supplied the paint for the Queen Mary II, offshore structures such as North Sea’s Troll A Platform and the re-painting of the Eiffel Tower but also can add the tallest building in the world – Al Burj in Dubai – and the prestigious Burj Al Arab hotel to its list of famous single source projects.
Whilst involved in many prestigious projects, Jotun is a lesser known brand in the UK and is has had a reputation as a ‘sleeping giant’ ready to be woken.
Jotun was formed in 1926, south of Oslo in a whaling town by Odd Gleditsch. By 1962, Odd Gleditsch’s son persuaded his father to take the company abroad and the first production plant out-side Norway was established in Libya, where there was a strong oil industry. From there, the company has garnered worldwide exposure, with offices in 71 countries and counting.
Richard Chapman joined the company in 2004 as UK Managing Director and Vice President of European operation. In the same year, Jotun under-went a change of management at the top in Norway and revolutionised the way the company was run. The new strategy, applied throughout Jotun UK and the other eight European countries that make up Jotun Paints Europe, cited robust growth.
“This was a turn around job,” says Chapman. “Initially we started growing all our business segments, from focusing on just being a successful marine supplier to also growing a decorative paint business and developing the protective and steel fire protection business strongly.”
Jotun grew ambitious in all areas of its business, guided by Chapman’s strong operational and sales and marketing experience. The company strengthened it’s sales teams and introduced lean manufacturing for a flexible, customer-friendly business.
LEAN
Lean is centred on creating ‘More value with less work’ and that’s exactly what Jotun has done.
“We changed the philosophy of the whole operation and brought lean manufacturing in to make sure it is a operation flexible to customer demands and we don’t waste time on things that the customer is not willing ot pay for,” says Chapman.
Today, Jotun has been running Lean throughout the business for the last five years. Lean manufacturing allows the company to react swiftly to demands, with the capacity to deliver at short notice to some of the major projects, something which has dramatically impacted Jotun’s ability as a business.
The first thing the company set about doing was improving the standard of the management team, before setting everyone on a growth strategy – improving the sales team and operational teams, with new people brought in to strengthen the weaker areas. “The great thing about the lean idea is it brings it down to the shop floor and into the admin areas and when deployed correctly empowers our staff to really make a difference and continually improve our business,” Chapman says.
With the right team onboard and a strong growth strategy Jotun achieved great success.
“That’s led to doubling the business in that period for the UK operation; we’ve gone from around £70 million in 2004 to £138 million last year, so a lot of people working hard here,” Chapman says.
In terms of the Lean philospohy, Chapman refers to it as ‘logical and progressive continuous improvements (or as the Japanese say, kaizan)’, starting with the 5S (Sort, Straighten, Sweep Standardize Sustain) ensuring everything is in order by first cleaning up, removing all unwanted items. This is followed by configuration of all machines, certifying conformity throughout similar machines in order to simplify the operation of each machine. Then, every tool or item is assigned to a place, reducing the time it takes for someone to find the required item “and that’s being organised and minimises wasted time,” Chapman explains. “Then comes the most difficult part, sustaining the improvements.”
The second thing, he says, is to look at the flow of operation and determine whether it is logical.
From there, machines and routings can be changed around, along with raw material flows, until there is a lot less wasted effort by the workers’ part and less complexity.
From a production efficiency point of view, all overall equipment efficiency is measured and reasons as to why equipment is under-utilised are identified, allowing Jotun to bring its equipment efficiencies up to a world-class 80 percent, when most companies typically run well below 50 percent. Techniques employed were quick change over (SMED) and measuring Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE).
Another innovative technique employed by Jotun is a value stream map, which maps how Jotun’s best-selling products go through the various processes.
Using its understanding, Jotun can compress the amount of time it takes through various lean techniques and reduce stocks because of a quicker response to customer demand on the bigger items. Afterwards the operation reacts well to the “pull” from the customer as opposed to “pushing” products into stock and hoping they will sell.
“All these tools under the heading of lean are for continuous improvement, it is the abso-lute disciplined persistence of keeping this going that enables success,” Chapman explains “We empower the whole workforce, after all 200 heads are better than one – and you make a lot faster progress in becoming much more efficient.”
THE FUTURE
The future looks bright for Jotun, the main challenges on the horizon being the currency exchange rate issues in 2009: “That’s been the most challenging aspect because whilst our global business is still performing well, the UK business is little down on volume but overall we are maintaining topline growth and profitability,” says Chapman. He puts the company’s shelter from the economic climate down to being in the right markets, strong focus on particular busi-nesses and Jotun’s organic growth strategy.
“We still have a long way to go. Our journey has just begun and the sleeping giant is waking up” he concludes.