Reengineered Manufacturing Processes Further reduced by 46%

The Client's Challenge

The client had just completed a nine-months exercise with PWC to rationalize and improve its processes prior to installing selected software. However, we demonstrated that we could further simplify the (improved) processes when we took a 21-step ‘improved’ process and reduced it down to 5 steps.

We were asked to help the team quickly simplify all of the processes before systems design and implementation planning commenced.

Scope

The areas that Olex Cables simplified included:

• Enquiries/quotes/tenders
• Sales order processing
• Production planning
• Manufacturing control
• Inventory management
• Cash collection
• Order dispatch/Distribution
• Complaints management
• Expenses/payments.

This represented nine concurrent process streams

Approach

Due to time constraints, the process was run intensively over six weeks across all of the processes with a full-time team of 16 Olex staff

All Olex sites in Australia and New Zealand were covered

We assigned 2 consultants to lead the assignment

The team that had completed the nine-months re-engineering study was successfully convinced to now do it again, faster and to question their previous results.

The Results

• The identification of a common “Vision” for the project highlighted previously unknown misunderstandings as to the business goals to be achieved and the meaning of ‘success’

• The number of processes were reduced by 46% and the number of process steps overall was reduced by 38% (from the already ‘improved’ processes)

• The principles underlying the manufacturing planning process were revised to make them customer-driven

• Manufacturing/purchasing flexibility was increased through common process design

• Issues with the already purchased solution software were identified (well before implementation) allowing work-arounds to be designed and optimized as part of the project

• Sixteen Olex staff were educated, coached and trained in Business Simplification techniques.

The Payoff

Concepts such as cross-docking, account management and proactive credit management were introduced and adopted

The resultant process and information flows were used to evaluate, at a detail level, the software products already purchased and highlighted gaps and deficiencies for remedial action

Problems previously unresolved (sometimes never even raised) were identified, addressed and resolved.