Lean Coaching

Industry: Services
Company size: Small
Level: All Levels
Participants: 4

Objectives

An Irish service sector company availed of Lean coaching from Catherine over a 12 week period. The company wanted to refine and improve some of their key processes including order management and returns.

Picking and packing processes were not conducive to meeting demand and product exchanges/returns were taking hours every week. The small staff team needed to save hours in the week so that they could invest time into working on the business instead of always being in the midst of the business processes.

Approach

A number of activities were carried out over the 12 week period. The team received some training in Lean thinking and Lean tools and spent time understanding how Lean methodology aligned with their strategic plans. The project included on site observation of picking and packing process, followed by interactive process mining and process mapping sessions to identify issues and opportunities for improvement. The team were facilitate to streamline their process and SOP’s were created based on the new and improved current state. The team were introduced to the PDCA cycle and supported to put systems in place to maintain changes and embrace continuous improvement practices going forward.

At a glance

Challenges

  • Meeting the customer demand operationally
  • Admin heavy tasks
  • Finding time to spend on improvement instead of fire-fighting problems

Results

  • Streamlining and standardization of two key processes
  • Predicted annual savings of 13K, based on hours saved each week
  • Increased operational efficiencies that increased internal capacity and decreased waiting time for customers.

Outcomes

1.Improved order management system with decreased waiting time for customers.

Increased autonomy within the team meant that the process was less dependent on one person, which reduced inventory build up and allowed for orders to be processed by any member of the team. This led to increased efficiency and the potential to increase sales.

2. Creation of SOP’s and increased standardization and quality

SOP’s were created which in creased consistency and quality. The team are actively using these SOP’s as well as standard documentation like email templates for exchanges/returns, which are saving hours every week.

3. Decreased reporting and admin work

The teams identified the hours that were spent creating reports and daily updates that were unnecessary. They learned to trust their systems and manage their data more efficiently.

Testimonial

The focus of this project was on LEAN together with some leadership mentoring. Catherine was methodical, interested, and most importantly, able to help us to successfully and beneficially apply LEAN methodology to our business. I recommend her wholeheartedly as someone with great LEAN knowledge and the empathy to apply it fruitfully in a business environment.