Operational Excellence  

The operational strategies of an organization drives the delivery of product and service offerings to customers. This is the area where the strategic objectives established by the leadership team get implemented throughout the organization. Our OPEX team is lead by a Master Black Belt - Lean Six Sigma strategist with decades of experience taking organizations to the next level. In fact, when he leans out a process for the first time it has historically reduced time by 50% and cost by 15%. Whether you need to lean out processes, create a Quality Management System, train your employees on problem solving or to be green belts, and many other operational functions, our OPEX team is prepared to work directly with your personnel to become more effective and efficient.

          Reduce Cycle Time: Assessing the steps in a manufacturing or transactional process using the Lean Methodology involves identification and elimination of those activities which are not resulting in value-added benefit to the customer. If a lean assessment has not been done within the last 3 – 5 years, there are likely opportunities to reduce a process’ cycle time by half in the first round of improvement.

          Reduce errors, Improve Quality, Reliability, Durability, and Life Cycle Performance: The Lean tools can be applied to mistake-proof actions, reduce errors and improve quality.  Typical reliability analysis can be used to understand what the infant mortality, steady-state failure and wear-out rates will be and how well they match the warranty and maintainability goals. Durability, Life Cycle Performance and Voice of the Customer studies assist design activities by understanding and applying the optimal level of engineering effort that will result in a balance between production cost, level of desired functionality/performance and the costs to sustain that over the projected Life Cycle.

            Reduce Costs, Resource Consumption, Leverage Supply Chain: Many designs of products or processes can leverage parts/components/equipment that are standard (or with minor modifications) from external suppliers resulting in reduced lead times and less investment in expensive, limited-use tooling. If this design approach is adopted from the outset, it can dramatically impact time-to-market and initial startup costs.

            Improve Flexibility of Large Capital Assets: Reducing set-up/changeover times from hours to minutes allows for smaller batch sizes, reduced warehouse inventory, fresher stock and greater ability to match the mix of product that is readily available to customers’ varying demands. Reducing complexity/rationalizing families of product allows for greater productivity of a wider variety of product with no additional large capital expense.

            Reduce Inventory while keeping same or better service levels: Analyzing the mix of sales, various customer expectations of service levels, and applying proven statistical algorithms allows inventory levels to be lowered while maintaining service levels as good as or better than before.

            Lean out Processes, Improve Productivity and Capacity with no additional Capital: Leaning out a process results in substantially fewer steps, and because these steps are no longer performed, costs are reduced, quality is improved, flexibility of the process is greater, and the productivity as well as the capacity of the process is greater. Common outcomes are a decrease of 50% or more, of non-value-added steps, and a reduction of 15% in cost.

            Detail and Improve Flow, Balance the activities based on Takt Time: Understanding the details of production steps and balancing the process flow increases production capacity at no additional cost, plus it gives greater flexibility in answering customer demand per the Takt Rate.

            Quality Management System integrated with Product Lifecycle Management : There are several approaches to design and implementation of a QMS. Probably the most effective and scalable is a combination of PLM and QMS, with the QMS playing a major role in the long-term success of PLM.  The QMS, whether an elementary approach involving only Document Control, Non-Conformance, Training and Audit, or more comprehensive with Control Plans, Supplier Quality Management, Change Management, Risk Management, Feedback Management, and Calibration of Measuring Instruments, is the fundamental means for Operations Monitoring, Control and Record all of the key activities essential for the organization’s success.  The most effective way a QMS can support a PLM is in an integrated system.