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Overview | Strategy | Operations Excellence | Supply Chain Management | Interim Management
Operations Excellence
Rapid Operations Assessment
It’s easy to say that shareholder value is important. It’s not so easy to make it influence the decisions that are made every day: where to spend time and resources, how best to get things done, and ultimately, how to win in the marketplace.
But the links between increasing shareholder value and driving those increases through “Operations Excellence” are not always obvious.
Another challenge - It isn’t easy to get support for improving a business, especially one that’s already profitable. Often, the only way to do it is by presenting a compelling business case. However, for the investor, financial institution, or company itself, the question often becomes “”where do we start?” KCB suggests starting with their Rapid Operations Assessment, a high level diagnostic of an organization’s operations and support functions, usually conducted within 2 – 10 days, depending upon scope and geographic footprint.
Our diagnostic entails four steps:
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A tour of the facility(s) to understand the effectiveness of both operational and support processes
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Interviews with key people across the organization, from the shop floor to senior management
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Data analysis – both operational and financial
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An Executive Summary of our findings and recommendations, including a prioritized list of options and roadmap forward.
The value proposition for private equity firms and venture capitalists is understanding what the potential upside (or downside) in shareholder value could be, and the associated investment risks.
For financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies, benefits, in addition to potential shareholder value gains include: a) potential increases in revenue from their existing client base, both internally and through referrals; b) developing a better understanding of their clients’ business; c) enhanced client relationships; d) risk mitigation.
For the investors and financial institutions clients, the benefits include: Opportunity identification in areas such as a) cost reduction. b) working capital. c) capacity, d) throughput, e) quality, and, f) service.
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Lean/Six Sigma
Historically, manufacturing was the place to create value – if you built it they would come – the “push” value chain in action. Today, the customer is the focal point in the value chain and all operations from selling to manufacturing to distribution must be aligned to customer requirements and demand – the “pull value chain as it has come to be known.
Within this new model, superior manufacturing capabilities such as adherence to quality, dependability, cost, and flexibility are now qualifiers to compete. Operations excellence requires organizations to perform well across all of these dimensions, not just one.
KCB works with clients to get them to understand what Operations Excellence means to them. Understanding the priorities – quality, cost reduction, increased throughput, flexibility, asset utilization – and aligning these operations accordingly. We educate people on the benefits of Lean and Six Sigma, and train them in the key concepts. We work with them to execute these concepts not only on the production floor, but across the enterprise. We work with them to achieve leanness of operations and reduce process variability through techniques like “pull”, single flow, SMED, 5S, just-in-time, DMAIC, SPC, and cycle time reduction, with significant bottom line results.
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Maintenance Management
In most organizations, when something breaks, maintenance is mobilized to fix it. Schedules are thrown off. Deliveries are at risk. Shifts sit idle. Costs go up. Production goes down. When the problem is fixed, calm returns….until the next time.
Company health depends on keeping all of its parts in proper working order. Yet it’s surprising that so many organizations neglect one of the essential elements of success. In numerous companies, business suffers because not enough attention is paid to maintenance – while the payoffs associated with effective maintenance management are significant.
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Increased capacity to produce and provide goods and services.
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Expanded process capability to produce to customer satisfaction
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Predictable safe and controlled work environment, with a minimum of risk
KCB are experts at building world-class maintenance organizations. We’ve done it across a broad spectrum of industries – from pulp and paper to mining and metals, from food manufacturers to consumer packaged goods, from oil and gas to chemical companies, from airlines to automotive.
We bring a highly disciplined approach to maintenance excellence. It starts with a rigorous health check in the form of a comprehensive maintenance diagnostic, it continues with a prescription of what needs to improve, follows with the business case for change, and finishes with the implementation of the appropriate maintenance strategy, people, processes and systems to sustain the benefits of lower costs, and increased plant reliability and uptime.
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