Strive for excellence applying lean techniques, continuous improvement and elimination of waste with the involvement of our employees.

As one of our core values STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE Lilydale has embarked on a journey into lean production, in a low margin industry such as poultry we have to improve our operations by developing a lean production system that is based on the elimination of waste with the involvement of our employees, the system will establish the environment and culture necessary to ensure that continuous improvement becomes every person’s responsibility every day.

The following improvements have been accomplished utilizing lean techniques:

• Development of a visual factory through performance on the plant floor, allowing the employee’s to see their daily performance against specific standards.
• Implementation of 5S starting in the tooling room in the packaging department which is the beginning of waste reduction built on the foundation of discipline.
• Continuous improvement or Kaizen performed by team members on the Multivac line, cryovac infeed table, and Julienne line, in order to improve safety, and productivity with a 35% improvement, also implementing ideas from the employees in the line allowing to relocate one operator per line.
• Development of a color code system in the Deli cooler area to maintain our inventory FIFO system where strict control is required.

These are just a few improvements that give us an idea of the opportunities that we are going to encounter during the implementation of a lean system that is based upon people, and elimination of waste in our plants and offices.

Lilydale Foods was established in 1940 as a Edmonton company. Lilydale was actively in the early years supplying our troops overseas in WW2 with powdered eggs. After the war effort Lilydale then moved into diversifying the company to frozen egg Mélange.

In the 60s Lilydale began to open Plants n Lethbridge, and central Edmonton (currently the location of Head office ) . The later part of the 60s Lilydale acquired the Calgary Plant as a growing Leader in the Poultry industry. In the 70s Lilydale acquired the Port Coquitlam Plant, further growing and expanding its operation. In the 80s Lilydale continued to grow with its purchase of the Abbotsford plant, and hatchery, purchased the Victoria plant, and the Edmonton Southside plant. The 90s were an exciting time as Lilydale moved towards all HACCP approved plants expanding our international trade to countries such as Japan, Mexico, United States, China, and Russia.

2000 and beyond…. Lilydale continues to strive for excellence in Poultry Products, becoming one of the Largest Poultry companies in Canada, providing Quality Poultry Products across Canada, and around the World.

Evan Schmidtke, Deli Co-Cordinator

Evan has been with Lilydale for 19 years, starting out his meat industry experience in Abbotsford. After working, and learning process on the primary functions of the Factory, he then moved into Further processing in 1992, to later become the Further Processing Manager of the Division for several years. During this time Evan was involved in Product development on many products, which are successfully sold across Canada today ( 4.0 kg turkey Deli roasts, and Oven tender products). He also participated in the production of products moving to the US, undergoing, and successfully completing with the team a USDA audit. Evan had many opportunities to join Sales, and perform product Demonstrations gaining business with several customers Lilydale has partnership with today. In re-locating the entire Deli division to the Edmonton Main Factory, Evan was an important part of the success of the transfer, and continued growth of the Deli division for Lilydale Foods. Currently Evan is the Deli Co-ordinator at the Edmonton Facility, over seeing all aspects of the Deli and Fresh sausage operations. As part of his Lean journey, Evan is currently enrolled in Lean Manufacturing with NAIT here in Edmonton.

Jairo Garzon, Director of process improvement

Jairo Garzon as over fifteen years of manufacturing experience, and is a graduate in Industrial Engineering, and Quality Assurance. Jairo is a Certified Quality technician, and member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He also has studies in business Administration, certification in Lean implementation, project management, ergonomics. Jairo has manufacturing leadership as well as courses in presentation and negotiation skills, with an extensive experience applying lean techniques in Manufacturing, assembly of construction equipment and also in high production of automotive components. He immigrated to Canada 18 years ago from Columbia South America. Before becoming employed at Lilydale he worked as a Linamar Production systems Manager At Skyjack and Quadrad Mfg. He is currently the director of Process improvement at Lilydale implementing a Lean production system.