Friday Nov 29, 2024
Friday Nov 29, 2024
Tuesday, 26 November 2013 01:25 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Ceylon Cold Stores PLC (Elephant House) emerged as the winner at this year’s Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Business Case Awards, held recently at King’s Court, Cinnamon Lakeside.
Winning for its continuous improvement-based business case entitled ‘Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step: How focus on sugar made results at Ceylon Cold Stores sweeter..’, the company highlighted the improvements to its syrup yield, at its soft drinks bottling plants, which reduced material costs and enabled an increase in profitability for the company.
The case also discussed how the increased syrup yield enabled the company to increase the overall line efficiency, resulting in savings to overhead costs. The importance of getting cross functional teams to solve problems and the approach of management to get the support of employees at all level was yet another key take away for the audience.
The Ceylon Cold Stores PLC team comprised John Keells Holdings PLC Assistant Vice President /Consumer Foods Sector Head of Management Accounting Sasanke Jayawardene who led the team, Management Accounting (Beverages Category) Assistant Manager Thilina Abeygunawardane and Process (Soft Drinks Factory) Assistant Manager Pradeep Manthreerathna.
Mindset for continuous improvement
John Keells Holdings PLC Consumer Foods Sector President Jit Gunaratne said; “Participating in the CIMA Business Case Awards has been a rewarding experience for us, and our track record proves that we continue to learn and grow because of it. Following a first runner-up mantle in 2012, we today walked away with the trophy for winner. Going one step further coincides with the theme selected for this year’s case and sums up the mindset for continuous improvement in all aspects of business at Elephant House.”
The CIMA Business Case Awards is a competition that recognises organisational success and turnarounds, whilst identifying what drove such outcomes. This year, the competition invited ‘corporate warriors’ to compete in the business arena, submitting business cases on ‘ground breaking’initiatives which have built and sustained success, whilst beating competition. Participants identified and narrated a specific real-life occurrence in their own organisations, presenting the case and findings, and showcased these learnings to a wider business community. All cases were evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges that comprised Prof. Uditha Liyanage, Dr. Travis Perera, Dr. Arul Sivagananathan, Manil Jayasinghe and Ravi Edirisinghe.
