Can Astute Ops support your business?
Case study: Mike Rowney, Austim
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The business: Timber supply to building, construction, trades and retail
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The challenge: Transition from wholesale to retail, including a short-lead time, premium service
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What Astute Ops did: When Mike Rowney decided to switch from a primarily wholesale business to focus on retail and trade sales, he found he suddenly had a customer base which wanted to know exactly where its orders were up to every step of the way, and had high expectations around availability and product turnaround times.
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His team produced beautiful, high quality timber products but had next to no experience with this market segment. Mike says the transition was bumpy in the first three to four years, because the team hadn’t been exposed to that sort of business. He says they knew the product well but not how to get to the market they wanted to get to.
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He also didn’t know how to even work out what the problem was, let alone how to fix it. Astute Ops came in on the recommendation of a business adviser, who told Mike he may be able to access grant funding for this type of consultation.
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Astute Ops quickly determined that the main challenge was to streamline and monitor the picking, handling, packing, and despatch of the product. Establishing a simple and clear way of tracking the status of each job without adding extra work was the challenge that AstuteOps had to address.
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Astute Ops mapped his operation and then designed and implemented a very simple piece of software to track which jobs were to be done in which order and which forklift driver was doing the job. This eliminated double-handling & rework. The team also implemented a simple despatch process for truck loading and delivery, which continued to work successfully until recently when Astute Ops implemented an upgrade to a more sophisticated system to track all of Austim's deliveries and provide customers with real-time delivery information, as well as electronic proof of delivery. AstuteOps meets clients ‘where they are at’. Often you need to walk before you run and break improvement down into digestible chunks.
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Key results: This was not a project based on 'savings' or 'head-count reduction'. This was a project about capability and delivering on operational promises. Astute Ops was able to support Austim to transition to a market that demanded premium service. The promises made to the marketplace needed to be supported by operational performance
The outcome: Mike says results came very quickly. Through their engagement with Astute Ops, staff understood what it took to deal with a new market with different expectations. Astute Ops was able to provide clear direction around what needed to change and how. Mike says this quick about-turn was critical because the business was quickly going south. His advice to other business operators is to seek advice sooner than later.
Case study: Kerry O’Leary, former Service/Operations Manager, Trend Windows and Doors Qld
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The business: Aluminium windows and doors
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The challenge: Streamline end-to-end business process from order to dispatch to reduce defects, rework, and avoidable service calls
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What Astute Ops did: When Kerry O’Leary joined Trend Windows and Doors in 2015, Astute Ops was already working with the business to link up every step of the production process. The system they custom built The new system AstuteOps were helping to integrate into the business allowed Kerry and the team to pick and choose configure modules that would suit their requirements across the whole of business, including sales, scheduling to the factory, dispatch and service.
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It was a big change from the prior system, which Kerry describes as ‘a pile of paper in manilla folders’. Sean from Astute Ops helped Kerry and her team by sharing new ideas, and some that had worked in other businesses, and then he helped the team with implementation. “The service was exemplary,” Kerry says. “If we called at 6am, they’d help us. They were always on hand.” Kerry says the industry understanding that Astute Ops offered was crucial to the success of the engagement.
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“Sean could walk onto the factory floor and say ‘if you do this it will change this’ and his insights were always 100% right. But he also took the time to listen to us, and give us time one on one.” One of the most valuable things Astute Ops delivered was a big picture view. Kerry says in business each team leader becomes focused on their own area or department, but Astute Ops brought the threads together and suggested changes that could create improvements beyond a single sector of the business.
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Key results:
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'First-Pass' Success Rate introduced. Only visit client site once for the expected event (Measure, Delivery, Install, General Service)​
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April – Jul 2018: Initial system measurement baseline:
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64.4% 1st Pass Success Rate
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3.6 hrs effective work completed per serviceman per day (excludes travel time, admin time, factory load time, duplicate visits for the same task) Everyone knew, understood, and accepted the KPI. Truthful, accurate measure of the time to do a task correctly, once.
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9.2% of service activities were “unplanned” = waste. (Either fixing an error or returning to site a second time for the same task)
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After 6 months mentoring, problem-solving and coaching:
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Oct – Dec 18
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73.7% 1st pass success rate (9.3%)
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4.2 hrs of effective work completed by servicemen (excludes travel time, admin time, factory load time, duplicate visits for same task)
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Gained 0.6 hours per servicemen per day in effective time
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7.9% of service activities 'unplanned' (reduce wastage by 15%
The outcome: Kerry says working with Astute Ops ‘changed everything’ for her team. “It changed the culture of the business. It’s more transparent, anyone can get the information they need. This is crucial for the people who needed to see it and it’s cut down a lot of phone calls and emails for our staff.”
“We have a lot of old timers and I am one of them. It’s hard to try and change your mindset but Astute Ops were able to do that and I don’t think others could.”
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Rod Taylor - Jeld-Wen
Case study: Rod Taylor, Operations Manager, Jeld-Wen Central Coast and Sydney
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The business: Large-scale window manufacture
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The challenge: Enable quicker throughput, lower costs to business and reduce the need to carry inventory.
What Astute Ops did: Astute Ops had already identified a need for a sophisticated new software program to streamline processes and provide operational transparency across all departments, and the new system was up and running in Queensland. When it came time to implement in NSW, Rod’s team found the transition very difficult, as it required a significant shift in the way his whole team thought about their roles.
Sean from Astute Ops provided consulting services that ensured he fully understood how the operation worked, how some of the existing processes had been developed, and what it would take to improve production outcomes. He was able to engage Rod’s team and come up with ideas that made a real difference in practice.
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Key results: Can we get any hard data like man hours saved, dollars saved, safety record improvement, customer satisfaction increase, new work won etc inventory carrying days reduced by xx
The outcome: Rod’s branch has fully implemented the new system and Rod says the biggest benefit is ‘reduced noise’ – no scrambling to understand where orders are up to, or see where there are any kinks in the process, because all the information is right there. Rod is now an in-house expert supporting the rollout to other branches.
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Read more about Rod’s experience with Astute Ops
“In the early days it was quite emotional for my team. There was lots of change management but Sean has a very good way of explaining how to approach things in a logical manner. I went in ready to lock horns with him, but by the end of the process we were best mates.”
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Rod Taylor - Jeld-Wen
Case study: Grant Cole, General Manager, Trend Windows and Doors SA
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The business: Aluminium windows and doors
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The challenge: Lift lagging productivity
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What Astute Ops did: The business’s CEO could tell from the numbers he was seeing that there was a challenge to be solved in South Australia. Productivity results looked different than in other branches and he wanted to know why, so he connected his state GM Grant Cole with Astute Ops. Steve from Astute Ops took a ’30,000 feet view’ of the operations and convinced Grant that he was 'trying to solve the wrong problem' and that Sean should conducted a detailed review. Sean brought with him, a whole new way of looking at the plant, and before long the site leadership found that revising operational structure, processes and procedures could lift productivity, afford greater business transparency, and 'un-stick' the branches work centres that were not coordinating their efforts.
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Grant says one of the first things Astute Ops did was to clear the space, figuratively and literally. “There were two 40 foot skips worth of 'crap' just clogging up the place – old machinery, things under benches, obsolete raw materials. One of the first things we did was agree that we needed organised places to keep things ... and only keep what we needed."
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Sean also provided the team with an opportunity to put all their challenges and ideas out on the table. “He took the time to understand why we did what we did, and challenged us respectfully. He knew there were historical reasons for why we did things and questioned if they were still relevant and added value. Astute Ops worked with the team on the best ways to work ... from having the correct tools, used the correct way, in the correct spot ... to creating flexible/portable work stations capable of adjusting to a variety of production requirements, and explaining (and demonstrating) pull versus push manufacturing theory.”
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The changes Astute Ops helped Grant implement did not require any systems upgrades or software solutions – they were all about better utilising the skills, equipment and people already in the business. Trend implemented a sophisticated software solution down the track, and the SA operation were well prepared because their processes already reflected modern manufacturing theory.
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Key results: TWD SA went from the basement to the penthouse, literally from the worst performing manufacturing facility within the group to the benchmark performer. The initial measure was 80% productivity when comparing actual manufacturing time to the defined standard, which was the equal worst of the various interstate branches. At the end of the Astute Ops engagement, they were clearly the top performing branch and started to exceed 100% productivity ... setting a new performance benchmark.
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The outcome: Astute Ops addressed the specific challenge around lagging productivity, but Grant says the bigger upside was a significant cultural change in the team, which went from a defensive, reactive posture to a 'can do' mindset ... do more; go faster; get better; work smarter; whilst always focusing on safety. “We learned the value of looking for areas of improvement at the 'pre-processing' stage (the operations planning window), and to address potential issues before they become a problem. After all we had seen just about everything that could go wrong, go wrong, over the years! The result has been less rework, less frustration, happier customers, and happier more connected employees and work-centres.”