Mars Standardizes Operational Knowledge Across the Globe
In this video, André Owens, Mars’ Digital Learning Manager, shares how the company has efficiently scaled Poka to global sites by leveraging the ability to share work instructions to plants with similar production lines and workstations.
Supporting the Learning Pillar of Mars Supply Excellence
Mars, one of the largest global food companies, has 130,000 associates globally across several divisions, including confectionery, pet food, and pet care. Mars started their connected worker journey in 2018, and today, Poka is the corporate standard solution that supports the learning pillar of Mars' production system called Mars Supply Excellence (MSE). The company has deployed Poka to 170 of 454 sites, with new sites coming on board every month.
“Poka's true capability comes from the ability to transform the Standard Operating Procedure. This will step-change our speed to competency. ”
Before Poka, Mars struggled to harness, share and benefit from collective knowledge across sites. The general feedback from employees was that it was troublesome finding information scattered across an overwhelming number of software systems and paper documents. Mars addressed this by simplifying its approach, making Poka the center of knowledge, and providing easy access to all levels of associates. The company prioritized quality and safety-related procedures.
Poka’s database structure, built to mirror production at a plant, combined with QR codes strategically placed throughout the factory, has made it more intuitive to access the information and answers associates need in the flow of work. They simply use iPads on the factory floor to scan the QR codes and have everything at their fingertips.
This data structure has simplified sharing work instructions across global sites with common assets. With the click of a button, Mars can ensure there is a single, global standard for critical procedures.
Standardizing Work Instructions Across Global Sites
All new sites start with an asset technology mapping
Duplicate work instructions to other sites
Set defined approval settings for creating and updating work instructions
According to André, "The ability to duplicate work instructions in Poka has been a huge game-changer for us at Mars. Where the true capability of Poka comes from is the ability to transform the SOP - for example, turning a 14-page guide into three to five-minute video modules. This will truly step-change our speed to competency."
Duplication has reduced the time needed to create content at each site while ensuring corporate governance over standards. Poka also makes it easy to translate the work instructions into local languages, where required.
These techniques speed up deployment times, allowing Mars to ramp up to one or two site deployments per week. To date, the company has curated a library of 7,000 digital work instructions with more than 90,000 views.
Mars is using Poka to build a culture of standardization, where product quality is consistent regardless of where it is made. Looking forward, Mars will continue to bring knowledge closer to their employees, digitizing their content in Poka through their Mobility Education Project and continuing to drive global impact through Poka.