Solutions

In order to stabilise the business four key areas that were addressed.

• Leadership

During the previous months lack of overall leadership was the key area reason why the business became behind with deliveries.  The organisation had no designated person co-ordinating operational issues, customer concerns and ownership of resolving issues.

When tasked with full business control, I liaised with the following key stakeholders;

• Customers
• Employees
• Suppliers
• Owner

Undertook a selection process of key employees to facilitate aiding the business through the difficult situation. This comprised of management and select employees with foresight and aptitude in supporting the driving of new processes and procedures to not only alleviate the business issue at hand, but to prevent it happening again in the future.

Key to this process was to embed a new culture of trust therefore empowering the team, executing a no blame environment was central to the cementing of a foundation to drive the business forward quickly and effectively in a bid to solve issues on a long-term basis.

• Communication

In the current digital age whereby, communication is often a faceless concept, we often forget the power and value in addition to respect that face-to-face communicate can generate. It was based in this premise that the workforce was brought together, and clear, honest communication was delivered on the current situation and scale of the issues faced.

This exercise resulted in an engaged and motivated workforce mobilised to adapt the new implemented processes and procedures to support in restoring the business back to a stable condition and return to profitability. Regular communication methods were then implemented to ensure that that all staff were aware of progress being made.

• Product Planning

Poor procedures, systems and a lack of experience within this business function had resulted in large for the company experience its current issues. Although the business had motivated and hardworking staff, departments were dysfunctional and lacking in effective processes leading to declined productivity and a subsequent decline in output.

Without adequate time to implement a new ERP system, the existing one was reworked by following basic daily principles along with clear guidance on what was to be done.

At the peak we reviewed the production plan 4 times a day to ensure the right products were being worked upon.

In linking the sales team and planning departments, this cohesion was instrumental in ensuring the team understood in real-time what actions were to be taken. The first measure of success was in the reduction of daily meetings from 4 times to 3, then from 3 to 2 and eventually once a day.

• Quality Issues

Due to the nature of the product in question, throughout the manufacturing process, there is always to be a high rate of rejection. This in itself creates stalling and issues across without the added pressure of being so behind in deliveries.

It was important that this was approached with a multi-pronged approach:

• Ensure that strong individuals were implemented to co-ordinate and support manufacturing by making quality decisions.
• Ensure that each department was working to the same quality standard and decisions were consistent.
• Created a focus adopted by engineering teams on process and tooling issues to reduce and eliminate quality issues.
• Drive a focus by all teams on problem solving and root cause analysis.