Operational Excellence Transformation (OET)

What is it?

We define Operational Excellence as “Having an operations capability that offers a genuine competitive advantage from consistently delivering a high quality, profitable product to the customer, exactly when they need it, safely”.

Our Operational Excellence Transformation (OET) process has been developed to take your leaders and operations teams on a journey that can help you to make a breakthrough on your specific operational goals.

Our process combines teachings from Lean, Six Sigma, The Toyota Production System (TPS), and Theory of Constraints (TOC), to offer a complete solution that delivers remarkable results.

Whilst every business will have different operational goals, we normally find that it is some combination of:

  • Reducing Lead Time
  • Improving Quality Performance
  • Reducing Operating Costs
  • Increasing Production Capacity
  • Improving Service Levels
  • Improving Safety Performance

By engaging with us on an OET journey, we will work with you to:

  1. Define your operational goals
  2. Understand the issues in your current state that are impacting your operational goals
  3. Develop a future state vision and roadmap for achieving it
  4. Inspire and develop your leaders and teams with the skills required to execute the roadmap
  5. Coach your leaders and teams throughout the journey to deliver the end result

How does a Pico Operational Excellence Transformation engagement help?

Delivering true operational excellence is complex, sometimes painful, but potentially extremely rewarding. It often requires almost counter intuitive actions that will not succeed unless the whole organisation is behind it. It requires really strong leaders who will stubbornly pursue an agenda that throws up new barriers to progress each day. It will also require an expert to create a roadmap for improvement that considers the total value stream and not just localised improvement.

Many lean practitioners that you may already have in your organisation are likely to be able to analyse your current state and develop a future state vision. However not all will have the depth of capability required to develop a truly effective roadmap for improvement, or the depth of character to support your leaders through such a difficult change.

For that reason, our experts can engage with you to provide a guiding hand throughout the whole journey. We have the experience to continually challenge your senior and front-line leaders, to say the things that are difficult to hear, and to develop your people to live and breathe true operational excellence.

How do we do it?

Whilst every Operational Excellence Transformation (OET) engagement is different, our process for improvement follows 5 distinct phases:

  • Phase 1: Define the goals and understand the current state
  • Phase 2: Design a Future State vision & roadmap
  • Phase 3: Develop foundation OET capabilities in your senior & front line leaders
  • Phase 4: Facilitate the key improvement areas
  • Phase 5: Coach teams to deliver on the operational goals

Phase 1 and Phase 2 are critical for ensuring all stakeholders are in agreement about the goals of the OET engagement, the current major barriers to progress, and the vision for improvement.

Phase 3 will give your senior and front leaders the knowledge, skills and motivation to begin making significant improvements. Their attitudes, behaviours and commitment will be critical for the success of the engagement.

In Phase 4, your teams will begin to execute on the roadmap. It is normal that they will initially need substantial facilitation support from us to overcome the inevitable early pain barrier and to start making progress. Quick wins are important at this stage, and our expert facilitation can help you to achieve those wins and build significant momentum.

Once in Phase 5, your teams will already be driving and facilitating much of the ongoing improvement themselves. Our input will be a lighter touch of continual coaching to ensure that the leaders and teams stick to and deliver the established goals. We will navigate you through the major challenges, and begin to develop real experts in your business who will ensure the sustainability of the improvements.

The duration of a typical engagement varies significantly depending on the size of your operations and your goals. In developing a solution with you, we will take time to understand your business so that we can carefully define the scope and duration of a successful work programme.

Want to speak to us about Operational Excellence Transformation (OET)? Why not contact us to find out more.

Also please take a look at our article: Why aren’t we operationally excellent?

What should we do next?

Effective problem solving, decision making and execution will significantly enhance the success of your Operational Excellence Transformation (OET). Building your Organisational Issue Resolution Capability will give your teams the skills required to cope with any issues the journey may throw at them. A great way to get exposed to these techniques is to organise a training workshop in the CASPER Issue Resolution Model.

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