The Company:
In 1998 Daystar Desserts’ humble beginnings began in a garage in Long Island, NY when two accomplished chefs, John Fernandez and Russell Cobb, combined their talents to create brilliant desserts of the utmost quality, accompanied by outstanding service to the customer. Through a lot of hard work and dedication, Daystar Desserts has grown to become one of the most respected upscale dessert suppliers in the nation, producing cheesecakes and specialty desserts for hotels, restaurants, grocery stores and distributors.

Daystar Desserts acquired World’s Best Cheesecake of Virginia in 2004 to create additional production capacity, offering a great variety of products. The company is now known as Daystar Desserts LLC, a privately owned company in Ashland, VA with 92 employees. They like to refer to themselves as a mid-sized company with “small business" service and "big business" capabilities.

The Situation:
As part of the Virginia plant acquisition in 2004, the owners inherited some challenges along with the property. First, the factory layout was not particularly Lean. A lot of criss-crossing foot travel was required from the freezers and ovens to the assembly/packaging areas. Required processing steps partially drove this, but some were just due to poor layout. Operations had more product racks than needed, but sometimes they found themselves short because of excessive WIP due to the batch production process. Sales had also tripled and Daystar was just beginning to turn a profit. The owners would have liked to take on more orders, but needed a better system in place. Management knew that improvements had to be made to current operations in order to remain sustainable.

A new plant manager and a new production manager had just been hired so management felt the timing was right to begin an improvement efforts company wide.

The Solution:
In 2008 management of Daystar Desserts attended a public L101 Lean awareness workshop held by GENEDGE ALLIANCE, a NIST MEP affiliate. Management recognized the potential of Lean to transform their company and increase productivity, which later resulted in engaging GENEDGE for a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) project addressing their cheesecake production process.

The project began with delivery of a VSM training overview to a designated team, and followed with the team mapping the process. As a result of the mapping event, suggestions were made for improvements in layout, scheduling, 5S (organization), POUS, one-piece flow, visual communication and Lean awareness. Daystar worked on these suggestions over the next few months with good results. The time had now come to provide Lean awareness training to the workforce.

Daystar management contacted GENEDGE for additional assistance. GENEDGE project managers recognized the limitations of the standard L101 workshop, aka Buzz Electronics, in providing a real world connection for this food producer. It was decided to create a unique training workshop for Daystar centered on a simulation utilizing their product as the basis for improvement. With that focus GENEDGE project managers created a simulation showing the advantages of using one-piece-flow concepts instead of a batch process for their selected product.

As a result of GENEDGE’s training and the implementation of the Lean concepts on their production floor, Daystar Desserts was able to lower the labor content of their product, take on new business, double their workforce, and most importantly, absorb the commodity price rise in 2010 and remain profitable in these economic times.

The Results:

• Increased sales from $3.5 million to $9.6 million
• Lowered labor content of their product from 25% to 14.5%
• Hire 45 additional workers, and add a second shift

Late accolades go to John Fernandez who was selected as Virginia's Small Business Person of the Year 2010 by the Small Business Administration. John was recognized in Washington, D.C. during the SBA's National Small Business Week ceremonies along with other state winners from across the United States. He was formally presented with his Virginia award at the Annual Small Business Awards Luncheon at The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond.

Management’s Comments:
"The work we did with GENEDGE ALLIANCE spurred a cultural change in my company which made us aware of all the non –value added expenses and pushed us toward operational excellence. The savings and increased efficiency resulting from these projects are the primary reason we have survived in an environment where we saw our raw material costs increase by more than 40% in 12 months!" - John Fernandez, President and CEO of Daystar Desserts LLC

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