Quick Glance Case Study: Change Management

“The Lean review has been fundamental in helping us to achieve collaboration and meet our goals for wider company initiatives”

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

90% of work was manually scheduled by our Field Team as they did not feel confident in the company’s automated scheduling system. Field teams were not keeping work recording devices up to date, which also led to scheduling procedures not being consistently followed (job priority not automated and open to manipulation). These manual processes were severely impacting the success of our company’s central, strategic automated programmes which were fundamental to our company goals.

A lean review was required to better understand Field Team concerns, encourage collaboration and build trust in the automated system.

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

Key people involved from client site

A strategy group including members of Senior Leadership Team, Field Team, Central Scheduling and the Change Team were involved in the various elements of solution delivery.

Lean Methodology Employed

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

Various Lean methodologies were used, including; SIPOC, Current State Mapping, Waste Analysis, Value Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Cause & Effect, Gemba Walk, FMEA.

Current State Finding and Issues:

A SIPOC was created to provide a high-level view of the current process, we then used the Gemba approach to walk the process and create a Current State Map.

The team checked the process maps for value-add and non-value-add tasks in order to identify waste in the current process.

This identified that field teams were following the correct process for recording work progress, but jobs were not selected using the official prioritisation method.

This manual intervention caused significant issues for our central, automated company programme that relies on real-time data.

We used a fishbone diagram to understand the issues in more detail. This really helped us to drill down to the root causes.

• Tablets not kept up-to date at the relevant time.
• Skills not kept up to date.
• End of day job update process not adhered to.
• Inconsistent/out of date training.
• High level of failure demand due to phone traffic caused by Field Team calling Scheduling Team to reallocate work.

Training and lack of knowledge regarding the end-to-end process seemed to be a key theme, so further analysis was completed using the FMEA tool to understand more about how and why these issues were impacting wider initiatives:

• 28% understood the impact of their processing activity and understood the wider picture.
• 30% of the answers revealed a lack of knowledge of the company’s centralised scheduling goals, and the impact manual processing had on them:
• Central teams had no confirmation that field teams have arrived home safely
• Unnecessary hours of non-value add work for central schedulers updating central systems.
• Field Team unable to interact with any of their jobs (also resulting in the Field Team being unable to schedule their lunch breaks).
• Incorrect management reports
• Potential to miss customer jobs

Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash

Future State Solutions, Benefits & Outcomes

In order to achieve cultural change and support our field teams, training was a clear area for improvement. Using information from the root cause analysis and FMEA exercises, the team focused on feedback from the field teams regarding training needs/delivery. This would help to standardise the process, and ensure a more cohesive, collaborative approach to work scheduling between field and central teams.

Training and Knowledge:

• End of day go live calls with field teams and scheduling managers to assist any process knowledge gaps and resolve issues.
• Operational scenarios created and shared with the SLT to help the SLT gain a better understanding of Field Team processes.
• Process for ensuring the Field Team have input into how new processes are working.
• 12-week plan to allow Field Teams to visit central teams/areas for an overview of the strategic, automated programmes.
• In alignment with the centralised system, assign jobs using geographical area – with field teams having the option to apply weightings/preference towards jobs. This will significantly reduce phone traffic to centralised teams who were previously updating job allocations.
• Tailor-based relevant training for the field teams, and delivered by their management team.
• Updated, visually appealing training to support engagement and aid learning.
• Involvement of the Operational Admin Team to support training delivery as they already had a strong working relationship with the Field Team and a good understanding of their role.

In Summary

The Lean review has been fundamental in helping us to achieve collaboration, drive change and meet our goals for wider company initiatives. Using the Gemba technique to provide our Field Team with an overview of the central programmes has proved vital to the successful outcome of this Lean review. Our Field Team consistently tell us how they really benefit from these visits. In turn, the FMEA feedback presented to our Central and Senior Leadership Teams has ensured we collectively see the importance of working as a value stream, rather than silo processing. Now we all understand how our actions impact customer value in the end-to-end process.

Interested in looking at how Lean can help to achieve cultural change and drive a more cohesive work environment? 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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