Dion Batchelor | Technical Assistant
Oceania Dairy is a dairy manufacturer in South Canterbury, New Zealand, focused on producing infant and adult formula for export to China. With a plant of roughly 320 people, they need every batch to meet the highest quality standards -- and they use KaiNexus to make that happen across daily operations, quality management, and continuous improvement.
Oceania Dairy won Nexie Awards in both 2019 and 2021 -- managing a KaiNexus implementation across 17 hours of time zone difference from KaiNexus headquarters.
Every morning at 8am, Oceania Dairy's canning and blending team meets to review the past 24 hours using KaiNexus balanced scorecards. The huddle follows a structured sequence:
KPIs first. The team reviews OEE, powder yield, canned damage, weight control, and daily production targets -- immediately visible on their KaiNexus board.
Discussion points next. Any event from the past 24 hours that affected KPIs -- health and safety incidents, attainment exceptions, OEE exceptions, people issues. Each one is attached to the relevant KaiNexus graph as an annotation, connecting the story to the data.
Non-conformance records. The team reviews NCRs from internal quality teams and external auditors, keeping quality issues visible and tracked.
Trend review. The team checks graphs for upward or downward trends that signal a process going out of control, then discusses improvements and solutions on the spot.
Kanban view for action items. Overdue and active items are reviewed so the team knows what's near completion and what needs attention in the next 24 hours.
Escalation. Issues that can't be resolved at the team level are escalated to the operational DMS huddle at 9:30am, where plant managers, technical managers, and quality leaders work through solutions and assign owners.
The huddle closes with a review of water usage and carryover for the next 24 hours, a check on weekly focus items not yet entered into KaiNexus, and a positive reflection section -- recognizing people who performed well, sent out via email for site-wide visibility.
Oceania Dairy's IT team automatically provisions a KaiNexus account for every new employee on their first day. There's no waiting period and no application process -- everyone is enabled to submit ideas and improvements from day one.
With 320 people on site and strong manager relationships, the result is a culture where machine operators feel comfortable submitting ideas without fear of judgment. Quality and finance teams run multiple improvements simultaneously, all tracked and visible in KaiNexus.
2019 -- International Customer of the Year. Awarded to the KaiNexus customer that best managed to spread improvement across the globe. Oceania Dairy came to KaiNexus with a clear plan and vision and executed it across 17 hours of time zone difference.
2021 -- Honorary KaiNexian. Awarded to the customer that went above and beyond in embedding KaiNexus into their processes and culture. Oceania Dairy hosts their own internal Nexie awards, has built deep platform knowledge across the organization, and consistently demonstrates what a sustained improvement culture looks like in practice.
Oceania Dairy uses KaiNexus for daily management, balanced scorecards, frontline idea capture, and quality improvement -- all in a single platform.
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