Identified £4.5m of operational improvement, fundamentally transforming operations and profitability.

WARP: the operational challenges of a healthy snack revolution

We Are Real and Proper, or WARP for short, is the team behind the Eat Real and PROPER brands. Their mission is to make healthier snacks that taste great - from perfectly popped corn to award-winning hummus and lentil chips. Their production facilities are managed and run by over 150 staff, each dedicated to delivering on their commitment to quality and sustainability with every bite.

The WARP team wanted to tackle inefficiencies across four critical areas: production of popcorn, bagging of chips, production planning and labour control. Their aims were clear:

• stabilise operations to deliver consistently excellent service
• create capacity to grow top line sales
• deliver a 5 percentage point improvement in gross margin

They reached out to us at majaco to take on the challenge, and we jumped straight in.

The challenge: inefficiencies holding back growth

Rapid growth had led to operational challenges for WARP Snacks. In the popcorn plant, throughput constraints limited output, meaning they couldn’t meet growing demand. Inefficiencies were hard to see and the potential for the asset hadn’t been determined, and as such the true size of the prize was not known.

On the chips bagging lines, waste was too high. Material losses and customer complaints were being caused by giveaway, overuse of frying oil, underweight bags and chips getting caught in the seals.

WARP’s direct labour requirement varied significantly hour to hour on any given day. This created a lot of baked-in underutilisation in the labour plan since they tended to resource to the peak hourly demand. Poor machine efficiency and a lack of labour control also meant the actual hours worked exceeded both the planned and standard hours needed to meet planned production. These three factors led to significant avoidable over-spend. Once we were all aligned on the opportunity and priorities, the work began.

How we did it

When working with the team at WARP, we took a scientific, data-driven approach to each challenge.

Popcorn

We went back to first principles to understand the conditions needed for optimal popping. We found the system was only achieving 20% of its true potential - mainly due to issues with delivery of temperature and the method and rate of stirring to homogenise the corn and oil mixture. We built a trial kettle and ran experiments, using a fine mesh to sieve out unpopped kernels and measure the ‘pop-yield’ and a microphone to measure cycle times. We refined the stirrer designs until we had one that ensured we achieved the best trade-off between speed of pop and yield. When this solution went live, the system’s speed doubled (cycle time more than halved), and waste decreased by over 50% as the percentage of kernels popped rose from 85% to 95%.

Chip bagging

On the chip-bagging lines, we used ‘split-solving’ to find and fix the root causes of higher than target waste. Split-solving systematically eliminates potential root causes, iteratively homing in on a set of actions which eliminate the problems. Using high-speed cameras, we ran trials to optimise machine settings and grouped products into logical categories to simplify future adjustments. In trials, we reduced waste by up to 80%, paving the way for standardised settings. We ensured these settings were included as part of the centre-lining documentation to ensure consistent rollout and adoption across production.

Labour planning and control

WARP produces finished cases of packaged chips across 10 distinct roles and 7 production stages, operating a 24/5 shift pattern with a significant proportion of agency staff. Actual labour hours were consistently exceeding the standard hours required to deliver planned volume.

We recorded the direct and semi-direct labour needs for every SKU and role. This allowed us to dynamically calculate the daily labour needs. With better scheduling, we smoothed the hourly demand and reduced the peaks and troughs throughout the day, lowering the maximum headcount needed. We also created new reporting systems, daily management processes and clear responsibilities - better aligning labour allocation with production demand. This made the whole plan accurate and achievable, unlocking big savings, increasing efficiency and improving service. Bringing labour spend under control resulted in 6 additional cases produced for every labour hour used.

Reporting

We also created a new KPI reporting framework to support these improvements and introduced a comprehensive breakdown of the losses versus perfect (100% efficiency), giving the team clarity on where to focus their ongoing improvement efforts. This included reworking WARP’s efficiency equations - redefining how they calculated slow running and planned downtime, giving them a true picture of their performance.

One of the areas of improvements was waste, and we’re substantially ahead from what was initially quoted in the improvements on that.

The result: a 7 percentage point (£4.5m) improvement in gross margin

Here’s what we achieved in each area:

• Increased popcorn capacity by over 100%, adding £1,340k in Unit Marginal Profit annually
• Increased labour productivity by 50%, saving £2,000k annually
• Reduced chips packing waste by 46%, saving £550k in raw material costs per year
• Reduced popcorn waste by 55%, unlocking £350k in annual raw material savings
• Reduced giveaway by 90%, from 2% to 0.2%, generating £260k in annual savings
• Gave WARP Snacks the standardised settings and reporting systems, enabling continuous improvements

Thanks to this collaborative effort, WARP is stronger, more efficient, and ready to grow - making it better positioned than ever to lead the healthy snacking revolution.

They’ve overdelivered on the labour savings we forecast.

They really want to make your business better.