Executed operational excellence for fund the future initiative
Introduction:
In the erratic economic scenario, the mergers and acquisitions are quite common in all industries. Such amalgamation enables companies and organizations to develop and enhance their presence at global levels. Apart from this several unpleasant consequences are also confronted with mergers like the operational issues, differences in the work culture, and the changed production process.
A packaging production firm transformed for the operational excellence under the guidance of Transcurve Consulting, had been hampered in terms of production efficiency because of such acquisition, but is now performing much better than the previous state.
The multi-million packaging producer planned to implement a new production system with a different technology. They invested heavily for the purpose but the mismanagement and not-so-prompt adaptation of the workforce with the new system resulted in losses and the organization faced a merger with a multi-national firm. Having cognizance of various fallible concepts and weak facilities, the parent company wanted to standardize the overall unit and sought help with Transcurve.
Assessment:
The expert professionals from Transcurve Consulting visited the production units and initiated their investigations by starting from the senior consultants and then to supervisors, production managers, and process engineers. Eliminating the anomalies in the production process, the main target was to improve the production units and their overall efficiency and implementing special organizational development strategies developed by Transcurve and teaching all the concerned the better ways of process execution.
The planning and development process included:
• Firm’s competitive positioning with SWOT analysis
• Factors and units requiring development or the areas with scope of improvements
• Creating a vision for the company’s future
• Interpreting the vision into easily apprehensible and related terms
• Defining the performance indicators
With several rounds of discussion with the process engineers and the production managers, the Transcurve specialists created various Fishbone Diagrams on different situations to easily present the complex up-gradation process and let all brainstorm the concepts.
Major problems:
The most cumbersome problem of the production unit was lack of proper understanding of the new process by most of the employees and all were confused with the old and modern version of the plant process. The new process was rolled-out and was tested to initiate without attaining the steady-state of the process, as calculated. This was leading to a lot of wastage. Span of control and the administrative personnel needed a little reshuffle, based on their competencies and weakness.
Approach towards solution:
Part 1: Training sessions-
In each of the production unit, the work on improving the production efficiency started with an interactive session of the Production Manager and Chief Engineers with the other concerned persons on the plant. This eliminated the confusion arisen because of the new methodology.
As the merger introduced new administrators of the production firm, the senior officials and the consultants were also trained by the Transcurve representatives with the following 10 principles which were highly required there. Such kinds of strategies are developed by Transcurve’s proficiency in the field of Organizational Excellence and development, HR development, and Business consulting.
1. Respect Every Employee:
When people feel respected they emotionally invest in the roles and put their best efforts than the mere formality. The respectful gestures suggested (based on the analyzed conditions with comprehensive interviews and feedbacks there) were like providing professional development plans with realistic targets, involving the employees in process development and improvement plans, assistance in problem-solving, etc.
2. Leadership with compassion:
Operational excellence also depends on leaders’ enthusiasm to ask for feedback and implement the ideas after thorough analysis. With the involvement & better acknowledgment, employees provided great improving ideas from their domain, and this happened only Transcurve’s facilitation through standard tools and practices.
3. Perfection in all endeavors:
Perfection is impossible but the pursuit makes one fairly close to it! The temporary fixes and ostensible workarounds were suggested to be replaced with the root-cause solution. Baseline formation was required in the firm before initiating the process again, and this resulted in simplifying the work for all with reduction in wastage and errors.
4. Concentration on Process:
Finely tuned processes lead to better efficiencies. Procuring all the relevant data, materials, inputs before applying anything into the process, and proper documentation of the process was required and suggested.
5. Experiential Learning:
Learning and developing the process based on the experiments and results makes one open to the innovations. The firm had a lot of scope for development so the employees were encouraged to be creative in their approaches to get the most efficient idea.
6. Assure the quality:
Quality is assured when process results are measured and analyzed with a vision to amend. Visualizing the potential error sources and fixing them without continuing yields better quality.
7. Optimizing the flow value
Organizations must create the products in the amount necessary to meet the imminent demands. This saves the wastage; and the best way to maximize value for customers is to create it only in response to demand and to maintain an unimpeded flow. This methodology keeps the process operations seamless and was one of the best suggestions to reduce wastage and lessen the initial investments.
8. Systematical Approach:
It is the understanding between the relationships and dependencies in a system to make informed decisions about process improvements. Analysis of the value chain and recording the interconnectedness among various process units leads to a systematically efficient approach; and was suggested and the team was specially assisted in its implementation.
9. Value Creation for the clients
It is the customers who drive the business and constitute the value for which they will pay for! Organizations delivering values effectively are the ones who outperform the competitions.
To create values for the customers following main points were interpreted in special workshop:
• Understanding the needs and expectations
• Reverting to the feedbacks and reviews
• Continuous improvements
10. Consistency in the business goals
Operational excellence requires a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s mission and such clarity of the purpose makes better decisions to yield the best every time. For attaining consistency in the process, Trancurve exhorted on clear communications, goal alignments, involving all the major employees in performance objectives
These steps meticulously achieved operational excellence and helped the Organization in achieving its business targets.
Part 2: Restructuring the Organization Design
In the interactive training workshop for the senior consultants, several distinct facts surfaced leading
to the re-constitution of the organizational design. Various role eliminations, roles re-leveling, and the enhancement of the span of control for all assistant managers were also implemented. Such reshuffle of power of control rendered various benefits in terms of both-hard and soft savings for the organization.
Part 3: Process Improvements
Based on the training of production engineers and the administrations, special emphasis was laid on eliminating the wastage. Based on demand flow and innovative approach inefficient process development, the wastage was eliminated to a great extent, leading to considerable growth in the revenue.
The production plant had lots of scope for the process automation, eliminating the manpower uselessly busy with routine tasks. The efforts were replaced with IoT & AI-enabled tools and robotic arms which not only enhanced the production capacity but also saved time and efforts which can be used for more productive tasks.
With a future vision, the overall process was refined to an internationally standardized production system with a provision of rapid adaptation to change in methods or technology.
The refined leadership tactics enabled the employees to put their best efforts and now the senior consultants and other businesses are found saying that employees here don’t work, they improve every day! Such ideology has resulted in better safety, quality, and productivity.
Transcurve Consulting works with the organizations interested in reinforcing and betterment of the business operations.The strategic approach deployed here is the safest, efficient, reliable, and the easiest to implement.
