Business Issue
An electro-mechanical fabrication and assembly business with the following challenges contacted Flow Consulting for Interim Leadership:
- Poor leadership in most of the operations functions.
- Deficient or no internal processes resulting in performance issues across the business.
- Delayed new program introductions.
- Declining delivery performance.
- Customer issues with quality increasing.
Approach Used
To stabilize and improve the organization, the Interim Operations director performed the following tasks:
- Skills Assessment — Assessed all operations staff from director–level through individual contributors using a skills assessment matrix for each person/position as follows: Expert, Proficient, Marginal or Not a Skill.
- Performance vs. Potential/Promotability — Assessed every individual in leadership and support roles.
- War Room — Immediately established a war room with a focus on containment and put in place checks and balances to assure issues captured before shipment.
- DMAIC — Utilized DMAIC methodology to ensure problems were adequately defined and prioritized: Systematically resolving the highest priority issues.
- Recruiting and Staffing — Staffing adjustments in multiple areas were required to meet current needs of a business in transition and growing. Five of eight director-level positions were filled as were multiple operations positions at all levels.
- Training — ERP system training and cross-training in production areas resulted in improved material availability and on-time delivery.
- Lean Initiation — Applied Kanbans on the input and finished goods sides of the business.
- KPIs — Key Process Indicators were initiated as a standard part of daily operations and monthly operations reviews.
Results
- Quality — Customer satisfaction increased from less than 50% to more than 95% due to significant quality improvements in two key product lines.
- Staffing — Eleven new leadership hires, including the permanent VP of Operations, has better positioned the business for future success.
- Customer Commitments — On-time delivery improved from less than 85% to more than 95%.
- Capacity — Capacity issues were substantially resolved through the effective use of Kanbans.
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