Every one of Ardagh Group's 56 plants ran a monthly 5S audit — the standard Lean Six Sigma check on whether a plant is actually following the standards it set for itself.
The audit itself was the problem. Ten people per plant, two to three hours a month, all of it in Excel. No two plants filled it out the same way. A team would print the form, walk the floor, take notes and photos separately, then go back to a desk and spend hours turning it into a report.
Plants with strong discipline kept up. Plants without it quietly let the audit slide into a checkbox exercise — scored, but not really documented. That was the actual shape of the problem: 56 plants, 56 different versions of the same spreadsheet.
Ardagh piloted Capptions at its Dongen plant in the Netherlands. Pierre Autret, Director of Lean Six Sigma at Ardagh Group, ran the numbers against the old process:
If you're still working with paper, I suggest you start with Capptions tomorrow. You can divide your administrative time by four and you will involve your people more.
Pierre AutretDirector of Lean Six Sigma, Ardagh Group
Four times faster wasn't the ceiling. At Ardagh's US site, plant leadership consolidated their EHS checks, 5S, waste-walk inspections, and quality process checks into a single audit run through Capptions.
The Dongen pilot alone logged more than 600 audits in three months. And what started as a corporate rollout became something plants started asking for themselves:
I'm pleased that we have sold the product so that the plant wants it instead of the corporation pushing it and saying ‘you have to do that.’ It's a bottom-up request.
Pierre AutretDirector of Lean Six Sigma, Ardagh Group
That mattered to Pierre for a reason beyond the time savings. Ardagh's Lean Six Sigma vision is that everyone — not just management — becomes a process improver. Getting shop-floor workers to engage with an audit tool, instead of dreading it, was the harder problem to solve:
How can we engage people who are coming off 8-hour shifts, potentially doing repetitive tasks, and give them a voice to show that they care about the environment. They can submit suggestions, they can validate that everything is in place.
Pierre AutretDirector of Lean Six Sigma, Ardagh Group
What changed
I like that you are still such a young company and that you listen so well to your customers. I see you have the potential to adapt to the exact need we have — instead of a very rigid product to which we have to adapt.
Pierre AutretDirector of Lean Six Sigma, Ardagh Group