The Least Waste Way to Select Hanging Baskets

At Smith Gardens in Aurora, Oregon – a greenhouse operation that serves customers throughout the Pacific Northwest – the process of selecting hanging baskets was unstable and no standard work was established, including the determination of crew size. The product was batch-pulled using a large scissor lift, and as a result, plants piled up and had to be worked around and managed. Batching led to counting errors, over-fertilizing, and other over-processing issues. Equipment use was unknown and varied based on “tribal knowledge” and what happened to be available at the time. There were also safety issues with crew members walking on the benches, reaching for baskets, and standing on a trolley to select baskets.

The current process required 735 minutes to select 224 baskets. Crew members were walking 633 feet, and the crew needed 42 minutes to set up for selecting. Productivity was 18 units per hour; cost per unit was 82 cents.

The Oregon Nursery Lean Consortium worked with the Smith Gardens selecting team to apply lean principles to create a new “least waste way” to select hanging baskets. The team looked carefully at each step to see where value was being added to the customer, and worked to eliminate steps that did not add value.

Working together, the team applied the principles of one piece flow and kanban to prevent batching of product. Instead of using a large scissor lift to batch 60 baskets in the platform, the team is now using a smaller scissor lift and established flow by aligning team members. A “kit cart” system was established to provide the selecting team all of its needed materials at the point of use, dramatically reducing setup time. The kaizen team created well-documented standard work supported by visual controls.