Quick Glance Case Study: Repair Alerts

“The new, simplified, automated process will substantially reduce failure demand and remove significant amounts of waste in the process – enabling employees to spend more time on value-add 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

This Lean review looked at the process for creating alarms (alerts) within our management system for the early warning of service interruptions.

The scope included the data extraction, manipulation and upload.

The existing process had become unmanageable:

• Existing profiles were not updated correctly, resulting in false alarms
• New profiles un-monitored

A Lean review was required to ensure new alarms were relevant and appropriate.

Key people involved from client site

Specialists including representatives from the optimisation & alarms/alerts handling team who are the primary users of the data, SME’s from IT and the insight team who have the skills and software to develop new algorithms.

Lean Methodology Employed

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

Various Lean methodologies were used including, SIPOC, FMEA, Current State Mapping, Value Analysis, SECAR, Ease/Impact Matrix, KPIs

Current State Findings and Lean Activities

There were no processes or instructions in place prior to the review, so various LEAN techniques such as SIPOC, FMEA and Value Analysis were used to establish a current state process map.

Mapping the Current State highlighted the following process issues:

• Once an alarm profile is created it is only as good as the current data, changes to trends over time require profiles to be monitored regularly.
• There are too many profiles to manage via the current manual process.

Voice of the Customer data was collected using contacts from affected areas of the business. These contacts remained involved throughout the review.

The Future State, Benefits & Outcomes

Working with the subject matter experts, we reviewed available solutions using the SECAR technique: 

Simplify the process by automating the manipulation of data and reduce the amount of time the process takes from start to finish.

Enable the identification of relevant data points in the system to allow for mass data extraction.

Create a historical data-base in order to reduce the volume of data per point that needs to be extracted on a daily basis.

Eliminate non-value-add steps by combining the data processing and profile checks within.

An ease/impact matrix was used to help prioritise which solutions would be implemented first.

We then completed a trial on 10% of data extracted from the system.

This provided evidence that automation of the profiles would grant significant benefits to the organisation, and we should pursue the implementation of the overall process.

To ensure benefits were monitored appropriately and enable continuous improvement, a set of KPI’s were agreed:

• Number of points that require template amendments
• Number of alarms generated
• FTE time spent checking profiles

In Summary

The new simplified, automated process will substantially reduce failure demand and remove significant amounts of waste in the process. This enables our employees to spend time on more value-add initiatives.

If you think improved system utilisation and automation could help your business reduce costs and improve customer service, 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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