Laly Navarro

5.00 AM

I wake up to get ready for day shift, grab a coffee, and drive to work at Abbotsford Brewery. There is not much traffic at this time of the day. I get to work at 5:45 in the morning, park and walk to the packaging hall, night shift Team Leader is waiting to change shifts at 6 am.

6.00 AM

As I enter the pack hall I walk the lines and get a feel of how they are running. We are packaging Carlton Draught in 375ml bottles in one of the lines and a special order - Christmas Crown Lager in the other line. We do a Team Leaders handover, review the maintenance plan, what we have completed and the issues we might have had such as; line breakdowns, blocked stock, quality checks issues and incidents,  gathering as much information as I can to report during the day. At 6:15 we meet in our Team room, review all the safety and quality aspects of previous shifts and talk about the packaging plan for the next 24 hours.  We are planning to change to Carlton Dry in one of the lines, and commission the crowner for the new Ring pull cap we are introducing. We review our problem solving tools: root cause analysis depending on the downtime we have had, and my shift starts.

At 6:30 in the morning, I call the whole Team for a shift meeting: 12 machine operators, two mechanical fitters and one electrician conform my crew: “The Gold Crew”.  We all get together in the Team room, and I go through the relevant information for the Team. We raise safety call outs, talk about quality and agree on our plan for the day.

7.00 AM

I do a line walk and sign all quality checks in the machines, while reviewing how we start to track in our quality performance indicators, such as Packed oxygen and CO2. At 7:15 I have a 5 minutes catch up with the Maintenance Controller and Unit Manager to review our maintenance plan performance. After this, I take some time for breakfast and check my emails: safety and quality alerts, updates on production plans, and emails about other ongoing projects.

8.00 AM

I prepare for our daily meeting, where I have to run through all the information about the last 24 hrs of production with the unit manager and maintenance controller. We review problem solving tools used, issues and risks for the rest of the week. We update our actions and report back on the completed ones.

9.00 AM – 1.00 PM

After our daily meeting I go back to the line for another walk, checking with the team if there are any issues. I start at the depalletiser and check the loads of empty glass that we are getting in. Then go to the fillers to review our rejection percentages and filling contents, walking the conveyors all the way to the labeller, where I check the codes on the labels are right. Then I walk to the shrink wrappers and review date codes, and finally that the finished cartons that are coming out of the packer up to standard. Every day is different, and for the next two hours I’m troubleshooting, checking and ordering materials, making sure the line is covered to run, coordinating changeovers, planning with Brewing and Logistics, and prioritising actions to be done. I get ahead of pending actions if possible. Plan training for my Team to review improvements in procedures and refresh operating standards, 5s and keeping an eye on meeting the targets for the shift. There is always something to do, and the day goes by extremely fast, without even noticing it is already time to prepare to handover to the next shift.

1.00 PM

At 1 pm I start collecting all the results to report from today’s run, the next shift starts at 2 pm and I need to have all the relevant information for the next Team Leader. I sign all the checks we have been doing during the day, and collect them together for the Unit Manager to review later this week. I go through all the quality checks and production results and prepare a shift report to send to everyone in the Brewery. Once my shift finishes, we have packed 23.000 cartons of Crown Lager and Carlton Draught together! I handover to the next Team Leader, having set up everything they need for a successful run.

2.30 PM

At 2:30 pm I’m walking out of the pack lines, and I’m done for the day. I drive home and still have time to enjoy the rest of the day.