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Showcase 8

 

Industry
Life Science Industries

Business Type
Contract Manufacturer

The Challenge

An affiliate of an Int'l Holding had to be re-directed in the fields of pharmaceutical, medical & cosmetic product manufacturing; incl. organization- and personnel development as well as shop-floor-management.
No Head of Manufacturing, Production Manager or Operations Manager was available.
The production staff was responsible for itself and were shrunk dramatically in an area in which it was difficult to attract new staff.
The production- and sales figures had gone down.
Customers were seriously dissatisfied and not only complained loudly but looked around for new suppliers.
 
The Steps
  1. Responsibility was assumed for all 3 positions mentioned above.
  2. The production staff was motivated by constant shop floor management (up to 12 hrs a day).
  3. Deferred responsibilities have been restructured.
  4. The shift system was adapted to the available resources.
  5. A living blaming culture was continuously counteracted.
  6. Various sources of error were analyzed for their causes and step by step corrected.
  7. A tight and realtime interaction with other departments and teams has been enabled.
  8. A new concept based on findings has been developed in order to stabilize but improve the manfacturing part mid- to long-term.
The Outcome
  1. 20% increased production output within 4 weeks.
  2. Substantial site consolidation within 6 weeks.
  3. A potential site closure discussion was swiped of the table after 6 weeks
  4. Sick days were reduced by 12% within the same time.
Our contribution ?
 

Finding the things that aren't good and making them good.
Operational management leading to an overall optimization of resource utilization and resource development.
Personnel and organizational concept incl. a scalable training program for the production area raising the bar and lifting current (average) Standard enabled and supplied.
A concept and contract with an external service provider to attract and educate additional resources was developed, negotiated and put in place.
An itemized project list to manage the most critical parts related to the organization's strategy was developed and handed over.

What I remember the most ?

  • Sad and "grey" faces, which became gradually happier and "shiny" again.
  • Lack of accepted responsibilities turned around and was taken.
  • A core Team of colleagues, who contributed volunterily a lot of content despite many overtime hours.
  • Massive quality issues that have been resolved piece by piece and made people proud of themselves.
  • Customer calls that were meant for explicit "Thank You".

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