Key Business Challenges and Project Objectives:

Our client has a busy manufacturing operation. Equipment and plant downtime is important as poor performance may result in high maintenance and repair costs or unreliable customer order fulfillment.

As part of an effort to improve equipment uptime, the client was interested in documenting the details surrounding machine downtime for maintenance issues (time and length of stoppage, machines affected, recent maintenance on the machines, root causes, etc.) to help in identifying and resolving future stoppages and ultimately reducing downtime.

LeanBPI Approach and Changes Implemented:

We met with our client, mapped the current process and developed the user requirements for a new data collection process. It was important to the client that we provided a digital mobile solution based on a workflow developed with the client team. The new process needed to be user friendly, involve as few steps as possible while providing all the required information to support process improvement in the maintenance area.

We developed a bespoke equipment maintenance digital workflow to meet the requirements. Users can log all maintenance issues including as much detail as is needed. After completing the maintenance task form. All open jobs are automatically pushed to the maintenance dept. From there jobs can be scheduled with data recorded on action taken and root cause. This digital workflow can be accessed and used on any desktop or mobile device.

 Results / Outcomes

As a result of implementing the new digital process, the users can easily log all maintenance issues without having to make personal contact with maintenance personnel.  All open issues are readily available to the maintenance dept. Downtime as a result of breakdown is tracked and  has reduced significantly over time

As data on root cause is collated by the system, trends on repeating issues can be easily detected by the maintenance dept. Implementing a real time maintenance logging system has put greater focus on the maintenance response time and has driven an overall reduction in downtime and improvement in productivity.

Key Business Challenges and Project Objectives:

A key metric for any enterprise is to know how time is being spent versus how time should be spent. Our client needed to know what time workers were spending on priced jobs, this information was important to understand if team members were completing jobs within the budgeted time frame. It was also important for the business owner to help with reviewing if jobs were being quoted accurately (were enough hours allocated to complete a job).

Before working with LeanBPI, our client had tried a number of off the shelf time recording apps. For various reasons these were not suitable, they either included redundant steps, took too much time to fill in, they also carried a monthly subscription cost. Team members are currently sending work hours via whats app, text or hand written time sheets. This data had to be tabulated into a spreadsheet and formatted for report generation / data analysis

LeanBPI Approach and Changes Implemented:

We sat with our client and reviewed the current process, we mapped the existing process, looked at what data we would like to collect and what were the most efficient way to collect the data. A number of mock ups of the new process were developed. Through the iterations of the mock up, with our client we developed a data collection process that represented exactly what they needed. For example, the client request that reports on work done had to include a minimum number of characters, this is a good example of a client specific request that we can incorporate into our bespoke system.

There were no redundant steps in the final data collection process. Once the data collection process was finalised, we looked at the data reporting side, how would data be efficiently collated to support efficient job analysis . We developed a digital workflow based on client requirements, our process knowledge and our technical knowledge. This was rolled out to all team members

Results / Outcomes

• ·       Team members switched to new system
• ·       Developed culture of on time job hours reporting,
• ·       25% reduction in time required to submit reports
• ·       Provide instant management data on hours per job versus target
• ·       Eliminated data entry step
• ·       Reduced contact time between team members and admin staff
• ·       Data copied directly to the book keeping dept for payroll
• ·       Data that was not previously available , eg materials used
• ·       90% reduction in admin time to process hours data 

Key Business Challenges and Project Objectives:

Our client had a requirement to generate quotes and invoices for customer at the point of sale site. The existing process was manual and time consuming and involved a lot of work our client had left his customer. The objective was to develop a product / process that could operate from the mobile or desktop and take advantage of cloud technologies to reduce waste. Paper systems are flexible, the challenge was a digital system that would retain the flexibility of paper while bringing the many benefits of digital. It was also a requirement to integrate the digital systems with other business systems. On the output from the system we needed to generate more than a PDF so all data need to be available for further analyis. The detailed data gathered from the sales process is very useful for sales analysis and needed to be available in a usable format. 

LeanBPI Approach and Changes Implemented:

We sat with our client and mapped the existing process and together developed a new working process. We developed and implemented a new system for part numbering and product categorisation as well as a digital workflow for taking orders and generating invoices. A number of mock ups were produced and tested. As the digital solution was developed and tested, the client identified further enhancements to make the system more efficient. This included integration of the invoicing system directly to their accounts package. The integration of client quotes with options to convert a quote to order was also completed. 

Results / Outcomes

Our client has switched their process form a paper based system to a digital  workflow.  Paper duplicate books have been made redundant. Our client is completing their work at their client site eliminating the after hours workload. The digital process allows our client the flexibility to upload their products and customer lists in advance, this provides a flexible yet structured solution that is fast and easy to use. The system is integrated with the accounts package, the data from the sales invoicing system is available to support business development.

Benefits

• the cost saved on printing duplicate books
• Reduction of time spent on paperwork and manual calculations
• Reduction of storage space required
• the elimination of time delay as paperwork had to be scanned for book keeping
• Environmentally friendly