Quick Glance Case Study: Order Process

“This Lean review has not only significantly improved customer experience, it will also create the footprint for many other products”

After completing a ChangeWise Lean Practitioner training course, one candidate submitted the following work-place project to gain their qualification to LCS Level 1c.

The Business Challenge

The order process for a specific chemical required for a key product was complex, involving multiple people and teams to raise alarms, orders, jobs for delivery, site visits, deliveries, order receipt processing and finally, closing orders down. Due to complex and multiple stages, there was also a history of failures at different parts of the process. This had a direct impact on both cost-base customer experience.

An end-to-end Lean review was completed to address the issues.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Key people involved from client site

Representatives from the Product Team, Reporting, Testing Specialists and members of the Senior Leadership Team.

Lean Methodology Employed

DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analise, Improve, Control)

The candidate completed a full Lean review of the end-to-end current state process.

Various Lean methodologies were employed including, SIPOC, Value Stream Mapping, Value and Non-Value Add Analysis and Cause & Effect Principles.

Key Current State Findings

To create a process for monitoring and identifying issues and failures, a workshop was held involving the Product and Testing Teams. The process for reordering the specific chemical element was mapped and the waste identified.

Using Current State Process Mapping, Lean Value Analysis and Cause & Effect techniques, two key areas for improvement were identified:

• Over Processing: caused by double-handling and repeat processing of similar operations.
• Failure Demand: caused by missing data as a result of the numerous departments and people involved in the process.

Benefits and Outcomes

Lean techniques were applied, enabling the team to achieve some significant process and cost improvements:

Working from the cause and effect diagram:

• Simplify: Removing unnecessary steps in the process would increase the % value from 13% to 33%.
• Eliminate: Removal of non-value add steps in the delivery process (email order though rather than phone call would improve processing time)
• Combine: Running product order with job raising and delivery acceptance with automated order closing for our supplier.
• Automate: Email generated direct to supplier.
• Relocate: Delivery note left on site

Additional Improvement Steps:

• Increase reorder levels to meet demand (now that a valid measure of demand is available). This will remove in-lead processing time as teams previously experienced downtime due to unavailability of stock.
• Reordering process simplified to enable auto-generated emails to the correct teams.
• Automated reorder alarms when stick levels are low.
• Risk reduction due to clearly defined responsibilities and traceability of the order process.

Photo by Ben Robbins on Unsplash

In Summary

The Lean review enabled several efficiency improvements, including significantly reducing the processing time for product reorders. Failure demand has been substantially reduced which will result in cost reductions and ultimately improve our customer experience.

There is also potential for the new process and improvements to form the footprint for all product elements in the same category.

Interested in looking at how Lean can ensure you implement first class product delivery? Contact us at info@changewise.co.uk and let’s talk about how we can help.

ChangeWise believes employee engagement is the foundation for successful Change. Training and coaching your people to use simple continuous improvement techniques will enable your organisation to continuously adapt and stay ahead in a constantly changing and challenging environment.

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