Sami Sillman

I started in the role of Plant Director in a situation of significant change. At the higher level of Valio's Operations organization, a substantial transformation journey towards perfect production has been initiated. In practical terms, this involves setting extremely ambitious strategic goals to radically enhance the factory's productivity, such as halving time and material waste and reducing fixed costs. In the Vantaa factory, this has translated into a highly diverse transformation journey, involving key measures such as organizational restructuring, improving safety and well-being, developing collaboration both internally and externally with stakeholders, enhancing leadership practices, developing LEAN processes, ensuring and supporting their functionality, as well as radically modernizing production technology. Additionally, I play a significant role in the strategic development of the company's production structure, consolidation of functions, and the development of common operational practices.

I worked at Sinebrychoff, at the Kerava brewery, with my responsibility covering the comprehensive operations of the filling department. Sinebrychoff is part of the international Carlsberg Group, where the Kerava factory plays a significant role, being among the top five production units in the company. Besides its size, what makes the factory interesting is its diverse product portfolio, ranging from waters, energy and soft drinks to ciders, beers, and alcoholic mixed products. Key themes in my work included people (safety, productivity, and well-being), quality (both products and operational processes), service (such as service levels and inventory turnover), and costs (productivity, waste reduction, etc.). At the heart of our operations was Carlsberg Excellence, and following its principles, we aimed to improve our factory's productivity with the main goal of achieving 3 % annual savings. Additionally, environmental matters played a crucial role in my work. We continuously sought to reduce our environmental impact through the Together Towards Zero program.

I was responsible for the Paulig’s crown jewel, Vuosaari coffee roastery’s, operations. Vuosaari roastery is a state of art, one of the world’s modern and efficient coffee roastery. My main tasks were to update the roastery processes, organization and ways of working to the level required of a healthy & profitable growing company. As well we started an investment program to renew and upgrade the process and packaging technology platform to secure the ability of the production plant to meet the nowadays and future changing needs. In the heart of my work was to build a winning team including both highly qualified leaders/managers and workers with continuous improvement in top of the mind targeting on a higher level of performance culture. In the change agenda I was leading the roastery towards a safety culture boost, higher quality awareness & tuning levels as well as improvements in the areas of efficiency and loss.

My main responsibility was the overall operation, development and achievement of targets of Unilever's ice cream factory in Sipoo. As tools to drive the tough overall improvement agenda, we were using World Class Manufacturing (WCM) methods. Sipoo plant is part of Unilever's European refreshment category’s manufacturing network. My reporting responsibilities were to the VP of refreshment category in Switzerland as well as partly to the Directors of the main functions in our matrix organization. Our main objectives were coming from the longer term strategy. High priority objectives for me and the factory were overall performance with operational excellence as well as both operational and product safety and quality, customer service and production efficiency & waste reduction (cost optimization). Additionally sustainability was one of the Company’s most important focus areas.

I was responsible for Sipoo factory operation in total; development and achievement of targets and the coordination of Ingman Group factories (purchasing, production, production technology). Few of the biggest areas of focus in the objectives during these years were things like production efficiency, cost-optimization and waste reduction. The organization was consisting of the following units: purchasing and raw material warehousing, manufacturing, logistics, maintenance, laboratory and development/engineering. My reporting responsibilities were both the company's management team and CEO as well as later on additionally to Unilever’s supply chain VP (Unilever acquired Ingman autumn 2011). During the last year my most important task was the integration of Sipoo plant to the Unilever's manufacturing network.