Case Studies
BUSINESS UNITS THAT AREN'T WORKING TOGETHER
Impeccable Furniture (IF) was about to launch an aggressive new strategy to transform a player in a reletively small market to becoming a supplier to the “big box” stores and compete against nationally known brands. Trying to go from a regional to a national player was both an exciting and a daunting opportunity.
They had two major concerns. One was how to significantly increase manufacturing volume while maintaining current levels of product quality and customer satisfaction. The second was how to keep the essence of their current culture while they grew rapidly and added new employees.
As a result, IF took a two-pronged approach. First, to increase productivity, they initiated a lean manufacturing initiative. That was the easy part. Secondly, they knew they had to understand their culture better. They needed to know what aspects to change and which to keep in order to implement the new strategy while maintaining their successful culture. They were unsure how to better understand their operating culture.
That is when they called us in.
How we revealed the impediments to change.
IF agreed to have everyone in the company complete our Organizational DnA® assessment to reveal what might get in the way of necessary changes to cut costs per manufactured unit and dramatically increase productivity per employee.
One key piece of data the assessment revealed was the lack of coordination between employees along the manufacturing process. For example, Figure 1 below shows that employees felt IF tended to have a “go-it- alone” operating culture (2.33 on the 4-point scale). That is, employees along the manufacturing and shipment process tended to resist partnering or collaboration with the next unit on the line. This data helped the executive team realize that a key problem was poor handoffs between various groups along the process. For example, parts didn’t always fit together properly and had to be sent back up the line causing unnecessary delays, cost overruns, and even safety problems.
The data made it clear that lack of coordination was a major problem.
How the client used our data.
The data made the executive teams realize that they had to implement a new way of operating where employees viewed their colleagues along the manufacturing process as their true customers. If employees viewed the person next on the line as their customer, the process as a whole would deliver high-quality, low-cost furniture to their ideal external customer—the big box stores. They knew they had both to implement a lean manufacturing process and find the root cause of why employees were not collaborating with each other.
The DnA® data showed them what needed to change to increase coordination at their manufacturing facilities. For example, each production line received training on lean manufacturing and problem-solving as a team. These sessions included appropriate warehouse and shipping employees to reinforce the need for end-to-end partnering in the process. In addition, they held short team meetings at the start of each shift.
As a result of these actions, as shown in Figure 2 below, when we repeated the assessment two years later, partnering and collaboration went up 17% (over a half a point on a 4-point scale).
In fact, one location improved so much, the executive team realized that this plant could handle the load from the other three. As a result, all the manufacturing work was consolidated into one plant.
Because of implementing both a lean manufacturing process and making pinpoint changes to increase coordination:
5 new roduct lines were added
And most importantly, they were able to win major contracts with the two largest big box stores—the ultimate goal of their strategy.
By using the data in deciding what to change and what not to change, IF was able to keep the best of their operating culture while getting business units to work together in a way that helped them meet stretch strategic goals.