Sudharsan Venukrishnan

Operations Lead @Bidco Africa

Kiambu, KE

Product Portfolio: Noodles, Baking Powder, Snacks & Cereals and NPD- Led overall operations for noodles, snacks, and breakfast cereals with a monthly capacity of 600 MT delivering consistent output while improving OEE by 10%- Spearheaded new product development and launches – 35 SKU’s of baked breakfast cereals, snacks and new variants in instant noodles- Demand and production planning based on sales forecast to eliminate short expiry and maintain stock opt. Coordinated with sales and logistics to ensure just-in-time manufacturing, reducing inventory holding costs- Project Lead for Project Nourish – Line De-commissioning, commissioning and installation of snacks & cereals; successful product trials and commercial runs- Leading continuous improvement for the site through kaizen rollout, SMED, lean manufacturing operations, manpower training, minor stoppage elimination which altogether resulted in 7% reduction in wastage- Interfacing between sales, marketing and procurement as a project lead for scale up trials and launch of new bulk seasoning- Development and successful production of in-house seasoning with beef key notes which resulted in savings of 640 USD/month- Championed across Quality Operations as an active Food Safety Team member to sustain the ISO standard, regular HACCP review, implementing quality check points to ensure 100% RFQ- Led the Inventory Management team to roll out annual inventory plan, storage optimization, FIFO compliance and operational excellence- Managing the plant maintenance team and monitoring the planned maintenance schedules, MTBF, MTTR, Root Cause Analysis, corrective and preventive actions