4pManagement Ltd

Every morning when I sit at my desk, I update my to-do list. Over the years this list has been in the back of my notebook, on post-its and in the far off days in my Filofax (remember them). I’ve also flittered with electronic notes on my laptop linked to reminders. At the end of the day I always go back to post-its, so much easier to update and I place the most important items on the base of my screen – so much more visual.

Mrs C also joins in, and the printed list on the left is my jobs at home! (big list with not many items crossed off!)

All of these aide memoirs help in daily efficiency, managing 4 different clients and 5 active projects, it’s easy to forget as you jump from one MS Teams call to another what you’ve committed to do. I’ve always been an avid note taker and now I have a notebook for each project, this is much easier to go back and review when I’m updating my post-its.

In fact, on one job handover back in my Nestle days the new person taking over from me asked for my notebooks, so he had more background on decisions I had made… good luck with my handwriting!

Q2 has been busy again. I spent a week in Mexico with my client whose start-up I’m helping to design. It was a great experience, the team were friendly and wanting to learn and I found the whole experience invigorating, stressful at times as some of the questions fired at me were challenging, but I’ve also put together a network of associates in process, packing, QA and formulation who are helping to answer the more technically challenging questions. At the end of the visit, we wrote a detailed action plan and have regular follow calls on MS Teams to keep the drum beat going. I’m back again in September, November, and January as we get into commissioning.

In the UK my client who I’ve proposed a Multi-packing line for has asked for time to consider their options, this happens as the investment is large and they need to be sure of the ROI.

In the CZ, I completed the site visit to audit the 10 lines and I’ve made recommendations on improvements to reduce their incubation time down to zero. We are working through a jointly agreed action plan and I will be back on site for further follows up’s in Q3.

In Italy the line is being built by the OEM’s, the global semi-conductor shortage has caused some headaches and required creativity to try and keep to the agreed delivery dates. One lesson learnt is although we had a backup plan agreed for different components, that when it came to DC drivers or motion controllers the OEMs were reluctant to change these. I can understand their point as often these are the brains of the line, but in future I will delve more into how we can have back-ups for these. The first of the FAT’s is in early August and it will be good to see the fruit of our labours.

In Poland the project has come back to life and in Q3 we will be busy specifying the requirement and finding the suppliers to help with the equipment relocations, this will be challenging as the client wants minimum downtime as the line is transferred into Poland.  

An old colleague called a few weeks ago and I had to cut him short as I was a few minutes from my tee time, he said every time I call your always playing golf…. not true I said, its about freedom that being self-employed brings and good time management!

Please get in contact if I can help with your pet food line design, improvement, or start-up.