The last 20 yards of a football field is known as the “red zone.” This is often where the most critical plays occur that determine the outcome of a game or even an entire season. Pushing the ball over the goal line depends on a mix of training, preparation, coaching, individual performance and players working as a well-coordinated, cohesive unit that can rapidly adapt to changing conditions.
Such critical, game-changing territories aren’t confined to the gridiron. For Raining Rose Inc., an Iowa-based manufacturer of organic body products, the red zone is its shop floor. And a key part of the company’s game plan is its ASPIRE philosophy (short for attitude, safety, passion, integrity, relationship and evolve), which requires it to constantly analyze, enhance and refine its operations, a practice that became even more important in the wake of the global pandemic.
The goal was to re-engage and empower employees by giving them new communication and analytical tools to help boost efficiency and overall performance. This led to a new partnership with QAD Inc.’s connected workforce provider, aptly named Redzone, which has already delivered significant benefits including:
“What we wanted to do with Redzone is give the players on the front line—the workers—the skills, the behaviors and the plays so they can adapt to the various challenges that occur every single day in a plant,” said Lawrence Green, senior vice president of sales for QAD Redzone.
Founded in 1996, Raining Rose has grown to about 300 employees at two facilities, each over 100,000 sq ft.—which if combined would be about the size of a football field—and now manages more than 120 products. The company runs 11 production lines fulfilling thousands of orders daily, ranging from lotions and hand sanitizers to lip balms and sunscreens for major U.S. brands distributed globally.
After the industry stressors associated with COVID-19, Chief Operating Officer Kyle Hach and his team decided to reevaluate key focus areas such as production visibility, paperless processes and frontline worker engagement.
“For some time, we were relying on spreadsheets and boards to keep track of everything,” Hach said. Despite some success, the approach left visibility and consistency below Raining Rose’s standards. “Unfortunately, only two people could access the information,” Hach noted, explaining that’s what happens “when you have software systems that don’t talk to each other and are difficult to access and extract data from.”
Continuity was another issue. While supervisors could walk up to a line and check performance, Hach said it was easy for them to lose track afterwards and that the next shift “had no idea what had occurred before them.”
At the same time, employee retention had worsened. Prior to 2019, Raining Rose had a 15-25% turnover rate, which was about the industry average at the time. But this soared to 50% during the pandemic.
Raining Rose realized it needed a technology platform that provided a holistic approach to manufacturing processes. After in-depth research, the company turned to QAD Redzone.
“It was clear QAD Redzone had already thought through what companies could gain value from and developed that into the software,” Hach said.
Acquired by QAD earlier this year, Redzone has provided connected software systems to manufacturers since 2013. The strategy features four industry-specific modules: productivity; compliance; reliability; and learning. The modules sit on Redzone’s collaboration platform, which Green said enables various teams to share information and work together. “We’re breaking down those silos between different layers of the organization, different departments, different buildings, different shifts, etc.”
Aiming to build a seamless communications channel across the factory floor, Raining Rose opted for Redzone’s productivity and compliance modules.
Noting that the productivity module is typically the first deployed, Green said it’s “about creating a visual factory and getting those KPIs (key performance indicators) in the hands of everyone.” While similar solutions focus on creating KPIs and visual factories for the management engineering teams, Redzone aims to “invert the pyramid.”
According to Green, Redzone emphasizes giving data to frontline workers. This stems from the belief that if these workers have the relevant information and the skills to interpret data, they can effectively adapt to different situations. Then the business metrics that leadership are interested in will improve as a byproduct of the frontline workforce “doing the right thing.”
Redzone’s mobile technology helped Raining Rose significantly improve equipment management processes.
“Our workers, for the first time, got their digital identity—something assembly line employees rarely have,” Hach said. “They got the opportunity to collaborate effectively, send alerts, and provide feedback for management.”
Compliance, which might not necessarily directly affect productivity, is nonetheless a critical area for Raining Rose’s operations and customer relationships, according to Hach.
“The fact that we can now see all weak spots can be a curse because everything is visible, but also a blessing, as it allows us to see and correct any issues before they become larger problems,” Hach said. “Using the QAD Redzone compliance module, we can fix problems before they become an issue. Having this visibility is a certain win.”
The improved visibility and communications coupled with productivity and efficiency gains, in turn, helped boost workforce engagement and retention. After deploying Redzone technology, Raining Rose cut its turnover rate to just 5% by the end of 2022.
“Now that we have identified the issue, I’m confident we will be able to stay within this range,” Hach asserted. Noting that every manufacturer manages equipment and employees, he said that Raining Rose is “able to engage with our employees, and how we are able to effectively work together to maximize equipment, is what makes the difference and impacts retention.”
Green emphasized the importance of maintaining a winning mindset. “When you are part of a winning team, you want to stay.”
After choosing to deploy Redzone, a company has six to eight weeks to install sensors on its manufacturing lines (if they aren’t already installed). The Redzone package includes tablet-based endpoint devices for frontline workers, a setup which Green describes as very quick to deploy, scalable and repeatable.
The next step is a 90-day coaching phase, with a Redzone coach on the floor the first day deployment goes live, according to Green, to ensure the production team is able to interact and interpret data effectively.
“They taught us not just how to use the product, but also how to use existing information to achieve continuous improvement,” Hach added.
Hiring the best coaches is critical. “We look for practitioners of continuous improvement rather than theorists,” Green explained. “All Redzone coaches have held industry positions such as plant manager, continuous improvement leader or process engineer, so they know the factory environment well, and it’s their job then to coach Redzone into the shop floor environment and make it part of the fabric of a business,” he said. “They embody the true nature of what it means to be a coach and get the best out of people. Many of them will coach their kids’ sports teams in their own time. So, you get that sort of personality, that personal touch.”
As in any software deployment, there can initially be some distrust among those tasked to use the new system. Frontline workers might wonder if the solution is just another flavor of the month or, worse, “big brother” looking over their shoulders. It’s up to Redzone coaches to build that trust, through practices such as “What’s in it for me?” meetings.
“They get all of the operators in, and their job is to explain: ‘This is going to make your job easier. This is going to give you the tools to improve. This is going to give you the visibility into what skills you need to get promoted,’” Green said.
At Raining Rose, there was some resistance among operators who wanted to stick with paper processes, as they couldn’t initially see how the software system was relevant to them.
“In our labeling area, where we are changing a line every five or six minutes, the operators thought the new system would not be able to help them and wanted to stick with papers,” Hach noted. “The QAD Redzone coaches persuaded them to try the new system for just a few days. Eventually, they became comfortable with the new way of doing things and smoothly navigating the app.”
As a result, Raining Rose was able to eliminate the paperwork for quality control, pallet and wrapper management. Now all the information is in Redzone, making it easy to access historical data and references.
The QAD Redzone deployment provided Raining Rose a single view of the production process. The strategy supported communication among various teams.
“Previously, our main database and a business intelligence system worked in silos,” said Dominic McNeese, Raining Rose operations packaging assistant. “Now we have one point of control that integrates everything, including data collected by the QAD Redzone endpoints. … It is easy to look up the datasheet history and find references. Operators don’t have to fumble with spreadsheets. That gives them more energy to make sure their lines are running efficiently.”
But, the main benefit is increased worker engagement and satisfaction, according to Hach. For example, Redzone helped identify weak spots and offer suggestions to fix them.
“Once you introduce your workforce to Redzone, nobody wants to go back,” Hach enthused. “All the information they need is right there at their fingertips.”
The technology also accelerated Raining Rose’s continuous improvement efforts. “The solution paid for itself within the first four to five months,” Hach said. “And we are factoring in all expenses, not just the annual subscription. Our estimate includes the upfront cost of the installation and all the hardware. These are gains we now expect to see year over year.”
For more information about Raining Rose visit rainingrose.com or call 319-362-8101. For more information about QAD Redzone visit rzsoftware.com or call 305-374-6278.
Connect With Us
