Client
Operations Improvement
Situation
The director of a manufacturing organization wanted to develop and implement a common language, method, and set of tools / methodologies to drive sustainable operational improvements.
Actions
Developed and delivered a tailored set of operations courses that included the following topics: (1) project prioritization methods; (2) project charters; (3) project development, management, and closure; (4) team dysfunctions and development; (5) standard work methods and 5-S; (6) spaghetti diagrams, value stream mapping, value-add and non-value add time, cycle time, production lead-time, and cycle efficiency; (7) SIPOC Analysis and flow charting; (8) FMEA; (9) SMED; (10) Pareto analysis; (11) basic statistics; (12) process capability; (13) cause and effect and The Five-Whys; (14) performance management and work center display boards.
Results
14 exempt / non-exempt participants attended 15-hours of training sessions and began to launch operational improvement projects.
Individuals developed specific actionable improvement plans including timing and measurements for success.
Leadership Coaching
Situation
A team of 25 professionals from a health care organization needed development on individual, team and organizational processes to improve their leadership and managerial effectiveness.
Actions
Developed and delivered a series of 6 @ 3-hour application-based training courses based on the following topics: (1) strategic management system; (2) external general environment; (3) entrepreneurial strengths; (4) domains of individual strengths; (5) personal flaws; (6) business-models; (7) leadership pipeline development; (8) team dysfunctions; (9) communication strengths and weaknesses; (10) leadership rites of passage
Results
Participants gained a deeper appreciation for the importance of self-leadership, personal skills, interpersonal skills, and group skills necessary for effective leadership.
Applied various self-assessments, and other relevant concepts to identify how to improve their individual and team behavior at work.
Developed a greater self-awareness on the strengths and weaknesses of their leadership skills and how to take decisive action to make improvements.
Acquired practice on conflict management and supportive communication methods to develop approaches to manage conflicts and to resolve interpersonal confrontations.
Identified advantages and limitations of teams and discovered how to recognize and overcome the most significant team dysfunction – holding one another accountable for individual performance and for the specific behaviors that negatively impact their team’s effectiveness.
Gained practical experience for how to work on a team that is focused on analyzing a component of the external general environment to derive and prioritize strategic insights relative to market opportunities, threats, and threats that could be turned into opportunities.
Leadership and Coaching
Situation
Administrator of a government organization sought to improve the leadership abilities and the overall culture among their staff, managers, and direct line staff.
Actions
Developed and delivered two series of an application-based set of training packages that included the following: (1) Culture assessments and improvement plans; (2) Strengths assessments and improvement plans; (3) Preference assessments and plans to balance; (3) Flaws assessments and partner-accountability based improvement plans; (5) Communication advantages and how to leverage; (6) Prioritized list of key stakeholder expectations and rationale; (7) Individual development plans based on key stakeholder expectations.
Results
· 29 people attended a total of 14 @ 2-3-hour training sessions
Teams aligned on a prioritized list for how to improve the culture of their organization including … What to stop doing, start doing, accelerate doing, accept doing, and the associated rationale of the benefits expected.
Individual improvement plans developed for how to improve strengths, preferences, communication advantages, and how to their flaws.
A combined report was developed, issued and analyzed to identify how to leverage team strengths, preferences, and communication advantages.
A prioritized list of stakeholder expectations and the supporting rationale
Individual and combined team development plans established for how to improve their ability to meet current and emerging key stakeholder expectations.
Operations Improvement
Situation
Some of the most significant investors in a $10-billion corporation began asking the CEO if they have a common way to identify, resolve, and share operational best practices across the corporation. The point was to drive home the point that without a common method they were wasting money and incurring unnecessary increases in both short and long-term assets.
Actions
Represented a $2-billion business sector on a cross-sector team that developed and implemented a lean six-sigma deployment strategy and roadmap throughout the enterprise. Roadmap included a formal operational excellence assessment to identify a current state level of maturity, gap analysis and improvement plans. Also, participated in formulating and delivering a standard lean six-sigma training curriculum for Champions, Yellow, Green, and Black Belts.
Results
Assessments developed and deployed netting the identification of significant operational improvement opportunities.
Leadership – Culture Improvement
Situation
A Director of a regional communications organization was dissatisfied with the excessive amount of employee turnover experienced on critical front-line jobs. They hypothesized the primary cause of the turnover was related to organizational misalignment on organizational culture expectations.
Actions
The Director met with all the employees in the organization to communicate: (1) the current situation associated with employee turnover; (2) the impact if this challenge was not overcome; (3) each employee would be asked to complete a culture assessment inclusive of seven key culture dimensions; (4) their input would require a rating on each dimension and their assessment as to what culture they have and why, and what culture do they need and why; (5) they would be asked to attend a workshop to discuss a summary of all the assessments provided and to provide further input.
Results
Received input from all employees – provided a summary of the input received to all the employees. Facilitated workshops to help the employees identify and prioritize their top 3 actions for each of the seven culture dimensions related to: (1) what they need to stop doing and why; (2) what they need to start doing and why; (3) what they need to accelerate doing and why; (4) what they need to accept doing and why. Follow-up actions were identified including accountability and timing.
Operations Improvement
Situation
Excessive purchase parts shortages creating final assembly schedule changes, which led to additional purchase parts shortages. On-time performance to the customer was unacceptable.
Actions
Led a cross-functional team that developed and implemented a purchased part kanban replenishment system with 30 key suppliers in a $200M business unit netting an inventory reduction of $1.3 million and improved on-time performance.
Results
Decreased inventory by $1.3 million, while creating a 30% improvement in supplier on- time performance.
Entrepreneurial Innovation
Situation
Executive MBA’s (EMBA) needed to know how to complete a business model and value proposition competitive analysis as part of a business-level strategy assessment. In addition, they need to know how to complete and design a disruptive business model and value proposition design as an input into the development of a business-level strategy. Small and medium sized businesses often lack the capability to competitively assess, develop and deploy disruptive business models.
Actions
Developed and launched an experiential learning EMBA course offering that provided a hands-on opportunity to work with a real entrepreneur on a business model and value proposition competitive analysis and redesign. The EMBA’s learned how to apply design thinking, problem solving, failure modes and effects analysis, business model competitive analysis (profit, non-profit, and social enterprises), value proposition design, lean start-ups, and scale up assessments. In addition, the EMBA’s gained practical experience on how to assess, develop, and present business models and business plans to investors.
Results
The EMBA’s learned how to apply design thinking, problem solving, failure modes and effects analysis, business model competitive analysis (profit, non-profit, and social enterprises), value proposition design, lean start-ups, and scale up assessments.
EMBA’s gained practical experience on how to assess, develop, and present business models and business plans to investors.
Strategic Leadership and Management
Situation
A major corporation launched an initiative to deploy enterprise-wide strategy maps and balanced scorecards. The CEO and the executive leadership team started with the development and deployment of a corporate strategy map and balanced scorecard. This was followed by the development of business sector and operations strategy maps and balanced scorecards. Executive leadership then decided to develop and deploy strategies for the individual functions (e.g. Finance, HR, Product Engineering, Sourcing ... etc.) in all the business units, but they would utilize a Vision Matrix methodology. None of the functional leaders had any experience with how to develop and deploy functional strategies via a Vision Matrix methodology.
Actions
Developed a Vision Matrix methodology training package. Trained the Directors of HR and Product/Service Engineering and their teams within a $2-billion business sector on how to develop a Vision Matrix for their function.
Results
Completed a functional strategy Vision Matrix for HR and Product/Service Engineering – inclusive of the following: (1) current state for all high-level core processes; (2) listing of internal customer requirements for each of their high-level core processes – including timing expectations; (3) vision statements established all high-level core processes for years 1, 2, and 3; (4) prioritized project pipeline established to achieve the year-1, 3, 3 vision statements; (5) measurements of success; (6) culture improvement plan.
Culture Transformation
Realigning a non-collaborative culture, $10B corporation.
Situation
A culture existed within the aftermarket segments of a $10-billion corporation that was not collaborative.
Actions
Developed the methods and led a Lean Branch back-office corporate strategic initiative comprised of a thirty-three-member enterprise-wide cross-functional team. The teams identified and developed process maps for all their major processes. At a week-long event they all presented their process maps to identify/share best practices. The goal was to align on as many common processes as possible to eliminate complexity and to reduce cost.
Results
Teams identified/prioritized projects to drive $8.2 million cost reduction
Projects led to $50 million working capital reduction
Strategic Leadership and Management
Situation
A 16-month Executive MBA (EMBA) Cohort Program within a private university lacked a substantive strategic management experiential learning offering.
Actions
Partnered with another experienced faculty member to develop and launch a strategic management offering that provided a multi-tiered experiential learning opportunity. The offering combined real-time strategic intelligence gathering and analysis of specific target companies – with analysis of various written cases to augment strategic thinking capabilities – leading toward the development and presentation of alternative profitable growth business-level strategies to the partner company’s executive management.
The projects required the EMBA’s to work in teams that include the executives from the partner companies.
Results
EMBAs learned to apply a formal team-based project launch methodology that enabled them to identify and leverage individual and team strengths and to identify, communicate, and ensure that specific individual wants from major projects are fulfilled.
Allowed EMBA’s to apply a wider array of analytical tools on a more complex business
Exposed EMBA’s to progressively more complex situations to augment their strategicintelligence gathering, strategic thinking, and strategy development capabilities
Required EMBA’s to function within an autonomous team-based environment to plan,develop and present alternative business-level strategies for a large-scale operation
Requires EMBA’s to contend with live strategic issues and the complexity of workingwith their own team and with the partner company’s executive leadership team
EMBA’s received real-time coaching throughout their project on how to improve theirpersonal effectiveness.
EMBA’s gained hands-on experience for how to assess, develop, and presentalternative profitable business-level growth strategies in health care, long-term nursing care, commercialization center, construction, packaging, clothing manufacturing, and recycle material wholesale.
Operations Improvement
Situation
Operations managers in multiple locations throughout a $10-billion global corporation did not have the experience required to complete a formal analysis of their internal value stream and their extended supply chain to identify opportunities to decrease total lead-time, to decrease variable and fixed costs, and to create short and long-term asset reductions.
Actions
Led numerous cross-functional teams on projects focused on completing enterprise- wide value stream and extended supply chain current state assessments and future state designs for operations located throughout North America, England, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.
Results
Completed enterprise-wide internal value stream and extended supply chain assessments. Developed future state designs to achieve specific business objectives. Developed a prioritized 6-month and 1-year project pipeline focused on driving decreases in cost, short-long term assets, and total lead-time.
Transferred knowledge on how to conduct value stream and extended supply chain analyses to managers and site lean leaders.
Established a schedule to meet with the managers and site lean leaders to assess progress and to identify, document, and share best practices across a $2-billion business sector.
Operations Improvement
Situation
A $1.2-billion business sector needed to reduce their long-term assets to improve Return on Invested Capital.
Actions
Led the development of a formalized global manufacturing plant rationalization methodology to enable the formulation of tactical plans to reduce assets, direct material spending, and to improve productivity. The analysis included a comprehensive methodology to assess if an organization had a distinctive core competence.
Results
Facilitated a business unit team comprised of experienced and highly respected directors through the methodology to develop a global operations strategic plan. Also, transferred the knowledge of the methodology to enable application in two other business sectors.
Entrepreneurial Innovation
Situation
A private university was interested in developing and launching a Launch-a-Business Center of Excellence to connect entrepreneurs in the region to the business network of talent from the institution.
Actions
Formed a team comprised of business faculty and business professionals to develop and launch a 15-week course offering focused on improving the business knowledge and expertise of entrepreneurs. Organized members of the business community to act as mentors to the entrepreneurs. Developed and launched an MBA Consulting course to teach the MBA’s how to be consultants and to connect them to entrepreneurs to help them apply what they learned in the workshops. Incorporated the Executive MBA’s to provide feedback to the entrepreneurs on their executive presentation in preparation for them to meet with potential investors. Connected the entrepreneurs to real investors.
Results
The only program implemented at that institution to simultaneously connect entrepreneurs, business-leaders, business faculty and administrators, Executive MBA’s, MBA’s, undergrads, alumni network, and investors
Over the span of 7 years helped approximately 1200 entrepreneurs in the region.
Operations Improvement
Situation
Internal Corporate University required experience trainers in lean six sigma methodologies.
Actions
Trained ~100 site lean leaders from North America, Europe, and Asia within a $2 billion business sector in a forty-hour process excellence course as a Corporate University trainer.
Results
Implemented a knowledge capture / transfer initiative across a $2-billion business sector to share lean six-sigma capabilities and best practices.
Coached directors and managers on how to deploy the capabilities within their organization.
Operations & Projects
Taught how to analyze value stream and the extended supply chain.
Situation
Operations managers in a $10-billion global corporation did not have the experience to complete an analysis of their value stream and their extended supply chain to net short and medium-term improvements.
Actions
Formed and trained cross-functional teams, and led value stream and supply chain assessments for operations located in North America and Europe.
Results
Developed and launched multiple 6-month and 1-year project pipelines focused on driving cost, short-long term assets, and lead-time reductions.
Transferred knowledge of how to conduct value stream and extended supply chain analyses to managers and site lean leaders.
Met monthly with the managers and site lean leaders to assess progress and to identify / document best practices
Leadership Coaching
Reinvention of consulting practices for internal consulting organization.
Situation
An internal management consulting organization was not meeting the needs of the internal business units.
Actions
Leader of two re-invention events that shifted an internal management consulting practice from a tactical hands-on provider of lean techniques for single factory assignments, to a provider of formally documented strategic and tactical methodologies and consultative services across multiple business sectors.
Results
Demand for management consulting services exceeded the supply of a 30-person internal consulting organization
Sourced external consulting resources to temporarily fill demand gap
Leadership Coaching
Adding six sigma training to corporate university, $2B business sector.
Situation
Internal Corporate University lacked experience trainers in lean six sigma methodologies.
Actions
Trained site lean leaders from North America, Europe, and Asia within a $2 billion business sector in a forty-hour process excellence course as a Corporate University trainer.
Results
Implemented a knowledge capture/transfer initiative across the sector to share lean six-sigma capabilities and best practices globally
Coached directors and managers on how to deploy the capabilities within their organization
Leadership Coaching
Created business incubator to teach basic entrepreneurial skills.
Situation
Small and medium sized businesses often lack the capability to competitively assess, develop and deploy disruptive business models.
Actions
Developed and launched an incubator at a private university that was focused on teaching participants about design thinking, problem solving, business model competitive analysis (profit, non-profit, and social enterprises), value proposition design, lean start-ups, scale up assessments, and how to assess, develop, and present business plans to investors.
Results
Taught ~300 entrepreneurs located throughout the region
Launched an MBA consulting class to assist the entrepreneurs develop/improve their business model
Culture Transformation
Cultural facilitation of large acquisition between $1B and $100M firms.
Situation
A $1-billion organization acquired a $100-million manufacturing business without a formal post-acquisition integration plan or a culture assessment.
Actions
Facilitated the executives of the acquired firm through a collaborative business assessment process to identify and deploy short-and-medium-term initiatives focused on increasing the value of the business. Included in the business assessment was a culture assessment. After the culture assessment was completed the team aligned on a prioritized improvement plan to identify what about their culture they needed to stop doing, start doing, and accelerate doing to improve business performance.
Results
Formal cross-functional teams accomplished the following:
Overall productivity increased ~45% in key throughput areas
Operating Income increased 75%
Work-in-process decreased 65%
Stock product finished goods inventory decreased 65%
DSO’s decreased 70%
Throughput increased 38% with no additional assets
Total product cycle time decreased >50%
Manufacturing cycle time decreased 65%
Overtime decreased 82%
Delivery performance improved 33%
Administrative process cycle time decreased 52%
Strategy
Created operational strategy, $10B corporation.
Situation
No enterprise-wide value stream analysis method to identify on-going opportunities to decrease costs and short / long-term assets throughout their supply chain.
Actions
Developed, trained, and led cross-functional business unit teams through a method to complete enterprise-wide value stream and supply chain assessments for operations located in North America, China, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and Russia.
Results
Coached managers through the development and deployment of prioritized 3-year project pipelines focused on driving cost and short-long term asset reductions
Met monthly with the managers to assess progress and to identify/document best practices
Strategy
Create strategic plan for global operations organization, $1.2B business sector.
Situation
Lacked a formal strategic plan.
Actions
Developed, documented, and trained a series of distinctive core competence, value proposition, and benchmarking workshops that became the best practice within a $10 billion corporation.
Results
Facilitated executive leadership teams of two $1 billion business units through the workshops
Workshop outputs established the framework for global operational strategies
Strategy
Created/enabled strategy, $10B corporation.
Situation
Functional Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecards did not exist.
Actions
Guided executives through the development of a three-year strategy and project pipeline for a Global Human Resources functional organization and a Product Engineering functional organization within a $2 billion business sector.
Results
Developed three-year functional strategies
Established Goals/SMART objectives
Created 3-year project pipeline
Deployed project management infrastructure