Case Studies

VA Business Solutions have implemented over 100 War or Control Rooms across a variety of cultures and geographies.

The Objective of the Control Rooms are:

To conduct a structured daily review of business performance in order to identify and resolve the issues that prevent successful execution to the plan by -

Review of KPI’s – identify areas of poor performance
Agreeing Actions – allocate ownership and completion dates
Setting priority – Everyone is focused on the same issues.
Changing the Culture – The open forum, visual nature of the meeting generates positive peer group pressure, which quickly builds teams, commitment and a “one plan mentality”. 

Please download the "case study" presentation attached for more information.
 

Asked by the company to review and reduce the company's stock level, VA Business Solutions instigated a two pronged approach. Firstly, we implemented immediate actions that shut off the inflow of unnecessary material immediately. In parallel to this, we established optimized stock levels by analysing consumption levels, prompting the redesign of the customer support strategy.

When the ‘operation’ being transferred is a full-blown engineering centre with no associated production activity then the challenges are compounded and the approach taken requires special care and attention. The margin for error is much smaller, and  the execution of the project needs to be world class so as not to to blow all of the expected gains through excessive relocation and start-up costs.

Any business looking to take advantage of China's labour rate benefits will have to consider leveraging their supply chains in the country. This newsletter gives an appreciation of the issues you will face and the VA Busines Solutions experience operating in this area.

The client are manufacturers of customised and standard rubber compound gaskets for the plate heat exchanger industry. VA were asked to support & guide the client to drive up their current COTD performance as it was having a significant knock-on effect to the financial performance of the company and its customers. 

Control Room – Set up to develop, monitor and drive improvement of KPI’s & install broader visual management techniques throughout the site.

COTD Recording – Data table set up to expand on basic COTD measurement. In order to try and understand the detail behind the order lines.

Critical Order board – Set up to track key order lines as identified by key customers in their weekly order book review. Daily updates regarding WIP from Ops & Logistics Managers. Continual process of daily tracking until order line is shipped.

Quality – Visual display boards set up to coordinate acceptable quality standards on trimming between customers & TRP and also provide general quality guidelines on manufactured product.

OEE - Set up to understand where capacity losses were occurring in the Press area.

ABC Product Classification & Stocking Policy – Introduced to secure availability of volume gaskets by using stock replenishment systems based on agreed rules.

Asked by the customer to increase production efficiency within their “Housing Production Cell” and by doing so, coach personnel in Lean Manufacturing principles. Savings delivered : A 49% increase in Productivity Efficiency within the cell. This is equivalent to € 9.2k per wk, over € 450k annually. A 38% increase in Productivity Efficiency within the site. This is equivalent to € 35.9k per wk, over € 1,799k annually.

Set-up Time reduced by 34%.Inventory reduced by € 86k (30%) as well as general Efficiency savings also achieved by: Secondary operations being completed in-cycle, a reduction in manual handling, Autonomous line management and
Operations team now practicing lean daily
 

VA were asked to intervene and work with the Operations planning function at Heathrow airport. The planning function at this major airport is responsible for generating a daily labour allocation plan for c3,500 security officers. The project scope was to gain control of and reduce cost from important variables; labour cost, overtime, absentee-ism, forecast accuracy. £1.2m (p.a.)savings delivered through better forecast accuracy, overtime and absentee-ism reduction.