[Cover Story] Just Born

The next time you walk your production line attempting to address every point that could impact the quality of your product, be thankful if “check faces” is not one of the points on your mental list. If your product does, in fact, have applied eyes, ears or mouth, you will be able to relate with Analee J. Rubio, technical services manager of Just Born, who said, while pulling misaligned Peeps from the line into the rework bin, “Eyes are a tough thing from a quality assurance standpoint.”

While the name Just Born elicits little recognition in most, further detail of the Bethlehem, Pa., confectioner — they make Mike and Ike candies, Hot Tamales, Easter Peeps and Peanut Chews — brings a much greater response, often including, “Oh them! My favorite is….”

And because these often are favorites that bring back fond childhood memories, consumers expect their box of Mike and Ike candies to hold the same colors it has always had, their Hot Tamales to have just the right kick and each Peeps chick to have one eye perfectly aligned on each side of its beak.

“When you have brands that are as old as ours, it’s amazing how people are very particular,” said Just Born co-CEO Ross Born detailing the 55- to 92-year history of each brand. And it is because of that connection and loyalty to the brand that it is just fine with Born and co-CEO David Shaffer that it is their product names rather than the company name that are recognized by consumers.

Nostalgia is very powerful, “and it’s a lot of responsibility,” Born said. “(Consumers) have a relationship with brands. If you mess with that, people don’t like it.” And when those brands are being used to decorate a holiday tradition, people justifiably expect the Peeps in their Easter baskets to have their eyes in the right place.

Continuing to build this loyalty and maintain value in all Just Born brands is attained through quality controls throughout the process, continued improvement and daily application of the company’s 20 philosophy statements — with a key focus on its people.

SWEETER TOMORROW SYSTEMS. Quality buzzwords and acronyms abound across manufacturing industries, but when Just Born began implementing its own Lean processes, it created its own version of STS — Sweeter Tomorrow Systems. “It was the staff, not David or me” who came up with the idea, Born said. “We wanted to adopt a phrase that would be meaningful to us.” But while the company had fun playing around with the name, it also understands the seriousness of the process. “We try to be creative and have some fun, but this is a very, very serious investment in our future,” he said.

Just Born began implementing its Lean processes about a year ago “because we needed it badly, for many reasons,” Rubio said. With STS now firmly planted in its processes to organize the workplace, standardize processes and sustain improvement, “we have more operator accountability and responsibility,” she said, adding, “Where we were more quality control, we are now more quality assurance. We have progressed from a policing role to an auditing role with more team-affiliated participation.”

Sustainability is key, Shaffer said, explaining that in the past the company had initiated many projects for improvement, but found that they didn’t always last very long. Now before a project is implemented, the question is asked as to whether the project is sustainable at a high level.

Why is this STS process and continued improvement so important to Just Born? “It’s pretty simple,” Born said. “We’re looking to thrive in our industry and there is only one way we can do that — by offering the best value to our customers.” Value, he said, for the retail customer as well as the end consumer.

“STS is how we are supporting what our customers are looking for; that is, to make easy money,” Born said. “That’s not being crass, that’s being truthful. We’re making it easy for them to make easy money — and it’s everyone’s responsibility to do so.”

CREATING A MINDSET. Implementing STS so that all employees see it as important, see it as their individual responsibility and work toward improvement is a matter of creating that mindset, Born said. “We’re looking to create behavior changes. That’s what we were told this morning (by the Lean process consultants), and David and I endorse that.”

Behavior changes and employee buy-in do not happen overnight, but they also don’t need to take years. Rather, Born and Shaffer expect the timeframe to be measurable in months. “It’s not quick, but we’re going to get there,” Born said.
Although the specifics of the STS process are still new at Just Born, the concept is not, Shaffer said. “Ross and I have talked about these things even before Lean became a term of art. When we started working together, we wanted to be at a standard where employees had not only responsibility, but authority, to get things done. This is the culmination of that.

“Everything comes in due course,” Shaffer added. “It took the right mix of talent in the right places — and that’s where we are now.”

This mix of talent includes STS Steering Team members Mark McLaughlin, senior vice president of supply chain and human resources; Drew Hoben, director of manufacturing; Marcia Misstishin, STS manager; Cathy Houser, labor and associate relations manager; Amy Carbine Stauffer, global supply chain procurement manager; Joe Schwartz, facilities manager; and Kimberly Sullivan, rapid improvement specialist.

CONTINUED IMPROVEMENTS. One major challenge Just Born has contended with — and one for which it continually implements improvements — is its plant facility. Originally designed as a printing factory, the building has housed the confectioner since 1932, when founder Sam Born moved its operations from New York to Pennsylvania.

Cousins Ross and David Shaffer joined the company in 1978, at first sharing responsibility with their fathers, then taking over as co-presidents in 1992. At that time, Just Born was manufacturing a broader line of confection, including chocolate candies. As the decision was made to streamline the company’s brands to jellied and marshmallow confections, they also began streamlining their processes within the building.

“We had been moving product all over creation from one place to another and back again,” Born said. “David and I had a dream — to bring supplies in on one side and put finished product out the other.”

Though it may sound like a seemingly simple dream, it is one that took a great deal of reworking. For example, Shaffer said, at one point the plant housed three packaging areas; now the single area is located at the back end.
As Just Born continues to expand and grow, so too does it continue its improvements of its facility — with areas updated and new sections added on. “It’s not just for cost, it’s for quality — and we’re so much better now,” Born added. “We laid it out, we had dreams and we created a plant that is so much more logical.”

The improvements have enabled production to be much more organized, improved product flow, efficiency and process, Shaffer added.

QUALITY CONTROLS. In addition to its focus on people and production, Just Born continues to improve it processes, implementing quality controls at various points in each:

• Visual Dashboard. Each morning at 9 o’clock, the managers of all departments gather to visually review plant performance and discuss current projects, personnel and safety concerns. The “dashboard” is a part of Just Born’s Lean manufacturing efforts, providing a simple, visual graphic of the status of its performance measurements.
• ICE. Identify, Control, Eliminate. Identifying root cause issues that lead to consumer complaints, then determining what controls can be put in place to eliminate those issues is a vital process in continuing to improve one’s product. And this is not just verbiage at Just Born, but is the function of its ICE team.
• Weight Controls. Implementing statistical process controls to bring weight variability in line has saved Just Born “significant amounts of money” previously lost to overfill, Rubio said. To ensure against underfill, “we used to simply overfill generously,” she explained. But maintaining a better handle on precise fill rates enables the manufacturer to meet customer expectations while maintaining much more cost-efficient standards.
• Food Safety. Although Just Born does produce Peanut Chews, a candy bar containing peanuts,  these are produced in the company’s Philadelphia plant, thus “ensuring full separation of our allergen containing products from the remainder of Just Born’s candies.” Additionally, Rubio said, “we are very fortunate in that none of our products fall under the ‘potentially hazardous food categories’ as defined by the Code of Federal Regulations, thereby minimizing many of the food safety risks faced by other manufacturers.”
• Sanitation. Just Born’s processes have consistently earned the company superior ratings from AIB. “We are a food factory, we’re not making furniture,” Born said. “We’re making a product people ingest. They eat it … but even if David and I were in the furniture business, we’d have a clean operation.”
• Employee Sample Testing. In a new program, Just Born is educating its employees in the nuances of quality and value. Samples of the day’s product are placed on a table just outside the cafeteria, and employees are asked to rate them: A — a quality product that will meet consumer expectations; B — should be reviewed; C — not acceptable, a consumer would not be happy with this. The goal, Rubio said, is to enhance associates’ understanding of what makes a quality product and the role they each play in product quality. 
• Finished Product Testing. Except for the metal detector at the end of each packaging line, the company also has no need for finished product analytical testing — beyond periodic sampling checks. This is because the process and the quality controls placed throughout enable detection of any problems earlier in the process.

PHILOSOPHY. Born and Shaffer are quick to give the credit for their products’ quality to the people in the plant. “What is really terrific for us is that we’ve generally hired people that are far better than we are,” Born said. “They are the ones who are making it happen.

“Our job is to be very supportive,” he continued, to encourage creativity and improvement and to sustain it. “All we do is surround ourselves with great people.”

At Just Born, it is indeed the people who make the difference and who will continue to be key in fulfilling the confectioner’s goal to continually improve value and nurture its classic brands into the future. To continue on the quest of its final philosophy statement: “We believe our work has just begun!”  QA

The author is staff editor of QA magazine.

Sticky Business: Making Mike and Ike Candies and Hot Tamales

Just Born now produces more than 4.5 billion pieces of its kosher, fat-free Mike and Ikes candies each year. The candies were introduced in 1940, and take three to four days to make, depending on the weather. Though the centers of the candies are differentiated by size and color — Mike and Ike candies are clear and slightly larger, while Hot Tamales are tinted red — these candy centers have no flavoring added.

Rather, it is the hard candy coating that provides the fruitiness of Mike and Ike and the zing of Hot Tamales.

Formed in a molding starch tray, the centers go through a 17-hour shake out and two-hour cooling before they are ready to move on for their hard candy coating. It takes a learned and precise hand to apply just the right amount of sugar and syrup at just the right times to keep the candies in specifications — and meeting customer expectations.

Because Just Born’s Mike and Ike candies and jellybeans are kosher, they are run on different lines in areas separate from the non-kosher marshmallow candies.

Just Born by the Numbers

The Pennsylvania confectionary company:

• produces more than 22 million pounds of Hot Tamales annually
• manufactures 200,000 pounds of jelly beans per day
• introduced it sour Zours in 1999
• has 525 associates
• uses 42 million pounds of sugar each year
• produces Peanut Chews in a separate facility in Philadelphia — using 11,000 pounds of peanuts each day