Factory Site Visit of Unilever - Assignment Example

Factory Site Visit and Report Firstname Lastname Student Number: CEIC1000 Course Number: FOOD1130 29 September, 2009 Factory Site Visit and Report Company Overview The history of Unilever goes back to the 1800s. William Hesketh Lever was the first person to brand soap with a name and wrap it before selling it to the public. The soap was called Sunlight Soap. In the late 1880s the Lever brothers imported the soap from UK to New Zealand. In the year 1899 Lever Brothers began soap production in at Balmain in Sydney, followed by the beginning of production in New Zealand in 1919. In the years that followed, the world saw considerable expansion of Unilever across the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Asia. In a history that now encompasses three centuries, Unilever’s success has been subjective to the major events that occurred, namely, economic boom, depression, world wars, changing trends and consumer lifestyles and various technological advancements. Their aim has been to create products that help people get much more from life, reducing the time spent on household chores, improving nutrition, enabling people to enjoy food, pushing them to take better care of their nutrition and health and in essence enabling them to take good care of themselves (Unilever Australasia, 2009). Unilever’s mission is to “Add Vitality to Life” (Unilever Fact Sheet, 2009). Their primary aim is to meet people’s everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that make people feel and look good and get more out of life. Their strength lies in the fact that they share deep roots in local cultures and markets around the world. These roots give rise to stronger relationships with customers from across cultures, across the world. Possession of local roots on a global scale is what gives the company an edge and makes them a truly multi-local multinational organization. Their long term success, spanning three centuries is attributed to their commitment to outstanding standards of performance and increased productivity. Their success can also be attributed to high standards of corporate behaviour towards everyone they work with, the communities they interact with and the environment they influence. Unilever strives towards creating long-term value for their shareholders, their people and their businesses. Legal Structure and Management Unilever functions as a single business entity. NV and PLC are two parent companies of the Unilever Group and these two companies have separate legal identities and separate stock exchange listings for their shares. Beneath these two parent companies a larger number of operating companies are active across many countries. To guarantee unity of governance as well as management, both companies have the same set of directors and are linked by various other agreements. The Equalization Agreement standardizes the mutual rights of the two sets of shareholders together with dividends. This ensures a one-for-one equivalence between the shares. Unilever owns more than 400 brands as a by product of acquisitions although the company focuses on what it terms as the billion dollar brands. The billion dollar brands include 13 brands each achieving annual sales of over €1 billion. It is to be noted here that Unilever’s 25 brands alone account for more than 70% of the company’s sales. The brands fall into two major categories, namely Food and Beverages and Home and Personal Care. As far as management of the company is concerned, category presidents for Food, Home and Personal Care products are responsible for category strategies, brand development and innovation. Regional Presidents are given the responsibility of managing the business, setting up brands and innovations effectively and thus winning over customers and retaining existing customers. They are supported by the Finance and HR departments. Unilever Products The complexity of the organization can be attributed to its wide portfolio of products developed over decades of change and development. As mentioned previously, Unilever owns more than 400 brands mainly through the process of acquisition. It is said that, “16 million times a day, someone, somewhere chooses a Unilever Product” (Unilever Australasia, 2009). Unilever began its business back in the 1800s with products such as edible fats which basically included margarine and soaps and detergents. But decades of diversification, resulted in the expansion to other products and activities (Jones, 2002). By the 1950s, Unilever began the manufacturing of convenience foods such as frozen foods, soups, ice creams, meat products, tea and other beverages. It then moved on to manufacturing personal care products such as toothpaste, shampoos, hairsprays and deodorants. The oils and fat business led Unilever into a new avenue of business namely, specialty chemicals and animal feeds. In Europe, Unilever’s business spanned diverse stages of the industry, namely from fishing fleets to retail stores. Among its array of auxiliary services, were shipping, paper, packaging, plastics and advertising and market research. Unilever also owned a trading company known as the United Africa Company. This company had its beginnings in importing and exporting goods into West Africa. But in the 1950s it turned towards investing in local manufacturing, specifically its interests were vested in brewing and textiles. The United Africa Company alone employed close to 70,000 people in the 1970s and was considered to be the largest modern business enterprise in West Africa. Unilever’s total employment was over 350,000 in the mid 1970s and this was close to seven times larger than Proctor & Gamble or any of its other rivals. A world-wide investor, Unilever has manufacturing and trading business all across Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. It is considered to be the largest foreign multinational in the world. Shampoo Manufacturing Process at Unilever Shampoo is a common hair care product used for the removal of dirt, oil, skin particles, dandruff, environmental pollutants and other harmful contaminant particles that affect the hair. The main goal of the shampoo is to remove dirt and other pollutants from the hair without stripping the hair of its natural oils namely, sebum, which lubricates the hair shaft. Shampoos are built and manufactured in such a way that they do not strip the hair of its essential natural oils. Hair shampoos are generally highly formulated products that are based on a limited range of cosmetically and medically acceptable active agents, conditioning agents, pearling agents, antimicrobials, colours and perfume. Shampoos are viscous liquids, are clear or opaque and contain 20% to 40% solids adjusted to approximately pH 5.5. Many shampoos have viscosity ratios ranging between 500-1500 centipoises. “A hair shampoo may be ideally defined as a detergent specifically formulated for the washing of hair, and packaged in a user-convenient form. Typically, a shampoo must clean well, rinse easily, impart gloss to the hair, minimize tangle and not damage the hair structure, or the scalp or the eyes.” (The Bombay Engineering Works). The Raw Materials The most common ingredient or raw material used in manufacturing shampoos is the detergent. The detergent called Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate comes under a class of surfactants called the straight-chain alkyl benzene sulfonates. This detergent is used in many other products also. This detergent works best along with water that has a bit of calcium and magnesium in it. Cocamide DEA commonly known as MEA or TEA is used as the foaming agent to create lather when mixed with water. In order to make the shampoos opaque and pearlescent, wax glycol distearate is added. Glycerine and propylene glycol are added to draw moisture from the air. Two commonly used preservatives, namely, DMDM hydantoin and imidazolidinyl urea are added to prevent it from getting spoilt due to fungus and bacteria. In order to keep the cuticle of the hair smooth and soft, the shampoo is acidified by adding citric acid. Lastly, in order to condition the hair and make it smooth and soft, silicone oils such as dimethicone and cyclomethicone are used. Fatty alcohols are added to lubricate the hair. Manufacturing Process Soap is manufactured by a simple process of blending the ingredients in a stirred vessel sometimes alongside low pressure steam heating oils (Vishvanathan, 2007). The process is shown in the flowchart at the end of this report. The first step in the process is to weigh the ingredients and mix them. The raw materials are weighed with the help of a weighing machine and added incrementally unto a mixing vessel. They are then mixed in the bulk material mixer at approximately 800 C. The heat is used to educe the viscosity and also to enable easy mixing of the ingredients. Some components such as perfume vaporize easily and hence they are mixed separately at a lower temperature of 250 C in a side mixer. Pearlising agents such as waxy solids at ambient temperature require separate mixing before the premixing stage. Demineralized water is used to minimize the contamination of the mixture. These initial mixers are generally known as the premixing vessel. The premixing vessel is a cylindrical vessel with a dished bottom. The top of the vessel is also dished or welded or can be provided with a loose lid. A high speed cowl or saw cutter type agitator is used in this vessel to mix the ingredients effectively. Normally the capacity of this premixing vessel is almost 60% of the capacity of the main vessel. After premixing the ingredients that were first mixed and the perfume that was mixed separately are added to the main mixer and mixed at about 320 C. Here the liquid is agitated further at the above given temperature. The main shampoo manufacturing vessel is also a cylindrical with a dished bottom. The top of this vessel is also dished or welded. The agitator used in this vessel is a slow agitator. Here either a Contra rotating or Semi Contra rotating agitators are used to agitate and mix the ingredients together. Suitable nozzles, valves etc are provided for the vessel for easy maneuvering. Manufacturing vessels are subjected to full vacuum. No further processing or procedure is required after blending and once the blending is done the shampoo is ready to be packed and sent. Once the agitation and blending is complete, the liquid is transferred into storage tanks. The storage vessel is a simple vessel used to store shampoo. It is also a cylindrical vessel with a dished bottom and a loose lid on top. The capacity of this vessel is the same as the main mixing tank and these tanks are generally more in number. The bottom valve in this cylinder is provided with din fittings to enable pipeline connection. When the production of one batch of shampoo is complete, the vessels are cleaned with hot water at a temperature of 800 C. This is necessary to clean the residue of the manufacturing process. From the storage tanks the shampoo is transferred into bottles that are to be sold to the customers. Packaging is the most important part of the Unilever shampoo manufacturing process. Packaging is regularly reviewed for effectiveness and environmental impact (Unilever Australia Ltd., 2008). The important objectives of their packaging include, transporting safely and cost effectively, advertising the contents, proving product and recycling information, protecting the integrity of the product and ensuring the health and safety of the consumers. Waste management is a very important process of the shampoo manufacturing process in Unilever. The waste water of the shampoo production process varies in pH values and the treatment of this water includes a physical-chemical process as well as a biological process. The waste collected to landfill sites includes, scrap hazardous wastes, chemically contaminated water etc. The waste is the separated after which the waste is divided into two groups comprising of recyclable waste and un-reusable waste. The un-reusable waste is either sent to an incinerator inside the factor or landfill outside the factory where it is generally burned. Source: Vishvanathan, 2007 References Unilever Australasia (2009). Our History Australasia. Retrieved September 29, 2009. http://www.unilever.com.au/aboutus/ourhistory/History-Australasia.aspx Unilever (2009). Unilever Fact Sheet. Unilever Website. http://www.unilever.com.au/aboutus/ourhistory/History-Australasia.aspx Jones, G (2002). Unilever- A Case Study. Business History Review. Harvard Working Knowledge. Retrieved September 29, 2009. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3212.html The Bombay Engineering Works. Shampoo Manufacturing Plant. The Bombay Engineering Works Website. Retrieved September 29, 2009. http://www.pharma-machinery.co.in/shampoo-hair-oil-mfg-plants.html Vishvanathan, C (2007). Industrial Waste Abatement & Management. Enviromental Engineering and Management, AIT Unilever Australia Ltd. (2008). Company Action Plan For The National Packaging Covenant. Retrieved September 29, 2009. http://www.unilever.com.au/Images/ap_Unilever_Australia_AP_PUBLIC_tcm72-118307.pdf Read More