Business Performance Improvement Discovery System

SPI Management Company’s Business Improvement Discovery Process is designed to deliver solutions that can be quickly implemented in 90-120 days, resulting in complete ROI’s of 9-12 months. It is our experience that business performance solutions are best deployed in small phases resulting in rapid ROI, minimal impact to existing operations and evolutionary (not revolutionary) change. These changes then become ingrained in the fiber of the organization and will not drift back to the problem state. We’ll conduct a few pre-visit interviews and focus our onsite diagnosis assessment in a few strategic areas. By targeting our efforts, we minimize your time investment and maximize our value to you.

Afterwards, you’ll receive a summary highlighting your processes and functions that either aligns to an existing solution or a tailored proposal to deliver rapid business results with defined economic value to your company. Based on these findings, we’ll prioritize gap opportunities with your business strategies. The follow up proposal review session will detail one or more logical paths for applying Six Sigma/DFSS/Lean/Business Process Management/Workout methodologies into your business environment.

SPI Management Company’s senior practioners offer many years of business improvement experience and literally thousands of six sigma project successes to assist you. We welcome being part of your efforts to continue to develop your organization as a world class manufacturing enterprise, with the flexibility to react to dynamic market conditions and the tools to implement continuous process improvement.

Required Resources

The following corporate and plant resources are required for SPI Management Company to successfully perform the assessment:

• Executive Sponsors: Divisional leaders provide the vision for the business and the business context for key drivers and critical success factors that affect your operations. Executives define the inherent business value of providing solutions that address key business drivers and critical success factors.
• Plant Manager / Manufacturing Leader: Provides the vision for manufacturing, short-term and mid-term goals, an overview of the line metrics used to evaluate plant performance and a short list of opportunities and barriers that must be overcome to either:
  1. improve throughput;
  2. reduce WIP and overall inventory;
  3. reduce labor costs; or
  4. improve product quality and/or cost. The Manufacturing Leader will provide his needs for visibility, timely reporting, explanations for manufacturing variances, etc. The Manufacturing Leader also provides the basis for an economic justification for any subsequent Phase 1 solution implementation.
• Project Managers(s): Provides the vision of the order fulfillment and the production process. The Project Associate(s) will provide an overview of the issues and challenges that are faced by the line with respect to suppliers, production performance, scheduling, materials management, and customer demand. This individual will provide a process view of the line and an overview of each and every operation and process.
• Information Technology Associate(s): Provides the business systems architecture overview, plus future systems deployment and interface plans. Also provides the necessary production reporting requirements that are necessary to satisfy inventory, purchasing and financial reporting objectives. The foundation for eliminating shop floor paperwork, data entry latency and information inaccuracies will be uncovered here.
• Engineering/Maintenance Associate(s): Provides the production floor overview for each process and production area. Associate will provide the level of production reporting capability that exists or is planned for every work center. Engineering/Maintenance will also provide an overview of any unique production and/or process data collection requirements, asset utilization issues, and the production floor’s capability to provide timely and accurate data.
• Quality Assurance Associate(s): Provides the current challenges and opportunities to improve the product. Product quality issues, supplier issues, customer quality requirements, and interface to existing or planned Quality Systems will be determined here. The goal is to understand what is driving your needs for quality.
• Financial/Controller Associate(s): Attaches the detailed financial justification to the estimated business value identified by the executives, the plant manager and the other associates. There are instances where the release of financial numbers may not be desirable. At that point, SPIMCO will leave the estimated business value in terms of percentage improvements for your later derivation.

The executive sponsor meetings are ½ to 1 hour in duration. The other meetings are no longer than 1.5 hours in duration. At the start of the project, SPIMCO will provide straightforward instructions and details to the individuals to be interviewed so that they can be prepared for the session.

Sample Discovery Process outline:

• Determination of High Level Organization Structure
• Identifcation of Core and Enabling processes
• 1:1 Telephone Interviews
• Review of Quality Report Rollup
• Identification of CSF’s and Levels
• Diagnostic Survey Instrument to capture individual perspectives
• Identification of Top issues/problems
• Analysis of organizational Competiveness
• Identification of Principle obstacles to achieving objectives
• Financial Analysis from Earnings Report Benchmarked to “Best in Class”
• Evaluation of Revenue, Profit and Asset Ratios
• Estimation of Value Added Contribution
• Specific Requested Financial Information, i.e. COPQ
• Interviews with Process Doers on most probable project area(s)
• Macro Process Map Development
• Generate Problem and Objective Statements
• Pick Top “N” Project Candidates for consideration
• Presentation of Proposal Focusing on High Probability, Short Time Effort Solution
• ROI Presentation
• Secure Agreement to Proceed