Collaborative Cycle Time Improvement: Kali’s COE Journey

Kali and her leaders managed a key customer-facing function.  The problem was that, over time, the processes had become complicated and cycle times had blown out.  Whilst the team followed the processes, they never asked the “why”.    She needed to stimulate fresh perspectives and get over “that’s the way we’ve always done it”.

Team engagement was one of Kali’s strengths – the Core Operational Excellence (COE) program now provided the structure for her to engage the team on a much-needed cycle time improvement journey.

THE ISSUES

• Fixed mindset and change-averse
• Siloed operation
• Workload not proactively managed
• No organisational learning or root cause analysis
• Skill gaps across teams with inadequate succession plans
• Sufficient total capacity but imbalances at a team level
• Bottlenecks and waste in processes

ACTIONS TAKEN

• Developed skills matrix and succession plans with individual development plans
• Adjusted capacity between teams plus a successful business case for a targeted resource increase
• Standardised processes between business lines
• Better utilisation of offshore teams for low-risk tasks
• Openly engaged team in all COE activities such as using data, getting to root cause and addressing waste & bottlenecks
• Greater collaboration and clear KPIs with a critical supplier

THE RESULTS

Kali and her team achieved outstanding cycle time improvement – after just six months the cycle time had reduced by 40 days and, six months later with more actions implemented, it had decreased by another 50 days.  This is an impressive 75% cycle time improvement in 12 months!

• Total cycle time improvement of 90 days (75% reduction)
• Improved supplier performance
• Ongoing implementation of a team-generated pipeline of small improvements
• 100% of team members are covered by skills matrices with no key person risks
• Insourcing critical processes for customer and business benefit
• Increased employee engagement
• Continuous improvement driven by team members
• Culture change with leaders working as a team, removing waste and continually learning

The pipeline of improvement opportunities continues to grow well after Kali finished the COE program – her team has genuinely embraced critical thinking and continuous improvement!

If you need your leaders to lift the maturity of their business, click here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.