Improving efficiency, effectiveness and capability in design, fabrication and production functions.
The Problem
Our client is one of the leading UK based engineering businesses; designing, fabricating and manufacturing engineered products for a wide range of global industries.
The business was experiencing problems in fulfilling customer orders and achieving financial performance targets, despite having a significant order book.
To uphold its position, it was important to transform ways of working, redefine processes and build capability.
Bourton Group was appointed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their organisation by acting as a partner and to develop a core team of individuals with a deep understanding of continuous improvement and project management.
This would enable them to manage the transformation programme from within.
The Solution
Based on our understanding, we recommended a manufacturing operational review and performance data collection. This encompassed understanding the perception of operations personnel and external customer requirements.
This was followed by mapping specific and discrete operational processes and sub-processes to understand key process stages, identify process and organisational hotspots and articulate these with data. Advanced Ease-Benefit based prioritisation of hotspots was carried-out with the key stakeholders to identify improvement areas and establish an implementation plan.
A transformation programme was established to design, develop and implement short, medium and long-term recommendations.
In collaboration with the management board, Bourton ensured that key stakeholders agreed on the methodology.
Six cross-functional teams across the organisation were established to work on the programme. The teams used a tailored version of Scrum (an Agile project management methodology) to manage the programme; inject pace and progress.
We set about establishing and delivering improvement interventions that followed clear steps to analyse and understand the issue and/or problems, identify waste and root cause(s) and develop solutions.
A series of problem solving workshops, process mapping sessions, collaborative planning meetings were facilitated by Bourton to analyse critical business issues and bottlenecks.
A wave of new streamlined processes, frameworks and new ways of working were developed as outcomes of the transformation programme were implemented with key performance metrics monitoring new levels of performance.
The Benefits
The benefits generated from the transformation programmes include:
- Increased capacity of the programming process by 15 times (bottleneck process)
- Improved On-Time in Full (OTIF) by 68%
- Reduction of design time of key fast-moving products by 71%
- Reduction of final assembly time by up to 50%
- Time to kit the parts in production reduced by up to 83%
- Reduction of job pack creation time by 75%
- Substantially reduced data retrieval time in production from a maximum of 240 mins/ product to 2 mins/ product
- Improved the quality of material requisition process reducing the errors by 75%
- Established regular production management meetings and pulse meetings within operations
- Established a workflow tracking system to track the project status across the organisation
- Over 50 employees trained in Scrum (Light version) and basic problem-solving methodologies enabling them to carry out process improvements and deliver benefits
- Developed a clear and consistent project management framework with tailoring capability to suit project complexity with built-in phase gates
What A manufacturer of engineered products based in the north-west region of the UK said about us
Bourton listened to business and collaborated to develop a bespoke methodology to address those needs. With scrum training, a tool has been given to the business to use going forward in support of continuous improvement. By involving teams and encouraging a mix of staff within each group, the programme has also improved communication and understanding of roles within the business. I would be happy to use Bourton again for all the reasons above. I have found both Mike and Doss a pleasure to work with, and would add that I have thoroughly enjoyed conversations with them regarding how we can improve the business, what we should be looking at, and their help whenever I have asked for it.
Finance Director
This is the first time I have worked with an organisation like Bourton Group and think that what makes them different is the way they work and that they become a part of the team itself. With issues being right through the whole of our business, I think that approach was what was required. One of the key things that you offered was that you didn’t dictate like some consultancies, you offered support in such a way which made people think for themselves with direction rather than give the actual answer to people.
I would certainly recommend Bourton Group to others should they need advice or guidance or indeed an all-out business turnaround as the approach offers mentoring rather than the usual consultant companies. If I have a requirement for this kind of service I would certainly consider using Bourton and, call on Doss’s services and skills.
Operations Director