Bitter Sweet Victory for Barry Callebaut USA LLC
as They Celebrate the Successful Completion of Their Required Upgrade
to ISO 9001-2000
Barry Callebaut was formed just over seven years ago when two powers of
the chocolate industry, Callebaut the Belgian chocolate producer and
Cacao Barry the French manufacturer, joined forces. With 30 production
sites worldwide, sales of 2.5 billion and over 9500 employees, Barry
Callebaut is recognized as the world’s leading manufacturer of
high-quality cocoa and chocolate products. Most recently Barry
Callebaut acquired Stollwerck Group, a German manufacturer and marketer
of chocolate and US-based Brach’s Confections Holding Inc. With their
recent acquisition of Brach’s, Barry Callebaut USA now runs and
operates seven US based facilities, of which two are located in the
state of New Jersey in the towns of Pennsauken and Swedesboro. The
Pennsauken location is used as both a production site and a sales
office which employs 85 workers and generates roughly $30 million in
sales.
In early 2003, NJMEP received a phone call from Barry Callebaut’s, then
current, Site Manager. He had worked with NJMEP while under the employ
of another company located in New Jersey and was extremely impressed
with the assistance he received. Based on this positive experience, he
felt NJMEP could be of great assistance to his new employer Barry
Callebaut. His initial areas of interest and concern were Human
Resource and Lean related activities but he acknowledged that several
areas were in need of improvement. Ronald Eleuteri, the NJMEP Field
Agent assigned to all Camden County manufacturing companies, responded
immediately to the initial phone call and was able to set up a plant
tour with the Site Manager for early April. During the plant tour the
Site Manager introduced Ron to the Quality Control Manager who
mentioned that she was trying to get the Pennsauken facility upgraded
to the most recent ISO 9000 standards. Recognizing that the upgrade was
not only a requirement by their parent company but the deadline to
become compliant was rapidly approaching, Ron offered to spearhead this
effort and task.
After careful analysis, Ron Eleuteri assessed Barry Callebaut’s needs,
presented a clear plan of action to their management and when given the
proper approvals, contracted with Prism eSolutions, NJMEP’s strongest
partner of ISO experts. Based on NJMEP’s past client successes with
Prism, Ron was sure he had retained the perfect third party resource.
The plan involved three steps; preparation of a Gap Analysis report to
determine how much time would be needed for training, consultation and
training by Prism to upgrade Barry Callebaut’s procedures to the 2001
standard enabling them to achieve recertification and finally, training
and implementation of SPC controls in the manufacturing area. The time
frame estimated to complete these tasks was six to eight months.
In less than four months Barry Callebaut’s requirement to become
recertified and compliant to the new 2001 standards was achieved.
Shortly thereafter, SPC controls were successfully implemented.
Completion of these tasks enabled the company to increase sales by over
$100,000, reduce labor costs by $10,000, and retain the jobs of all 85
employees.
Bill Hayes, Barry Callebaut’s present Site Manager stated, “We have
been extremely pleased with Ron’s assistance. In both cases Ron was
able to assist us in getting the help we needed and did so quickly and
at a reasonable cost. We will use Ron and NJMEP whenever possible.”
“Ron Eleuteri and NJMEP have proven to be a valuable resource for Barry
Callebaut. As a service provider with government funds, it is important
that Congress continues to allocate funds for their existence. They are
a valuable asset to the manufacturers of New Jersey.”
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