Our client, a public company, is a world leader in the business-to-business distribution of maintenance, repair, and operating supplies. It serves more than one million customers, providing next-day access to over 200,000 products and has annual sales in excess of $5 billion.
The company had two key dilemmas. Its first was difficulty in extending its capability to deal with large customers via a greatly expanded product line and set of service options. Secondly, it struggled to improve infrastructure and processes to support enhanced logistics capabilities, improved product presentation, expanded information systems support, and improved management processes.
Thomas Group was engaged in an extensive program; the key objectives were:
Create a rapid customer response capability through changing the management decision/action culture
Improve the company’s ability to add new suppliers and products and capture market opportunities
Improve asset management and profit growth in an ever-increasing service and price sensitive environment
After forming the business improvement team and cross-functional teams, client staff were trained in TCT® methodology. Staff became not just participants in, but leaders of the change program.
The next step was to create a clear picture of the company’s new product introduction, supply chain, and information systems processes through process mapping. As drivers for improvement, measurements were defined, and then baseline (current performance) and entitlement (target performance) were set.
The cross-functional teams, facilitated by Thomas Group’s team of industry experienced Resultants®, were tasked to identify root cause barriers to reducing cycle time and increase first pass yield. These barriers were removed by client task forces known as barrier removal teams which used the measurement system to guide the choice of barrier and monitor actual improvement achieved after its removal.
An action in process management system was installed throughout the organization, including the senior management level which had the impact of clarifying priorities around the company’s key business objectives. For the rest of the organization, this approach prioritized project flow through the business processes by applying filters to ensure that projects and resources were aligned and in support of company strategy. Implementation of a figure of merit helped to achieve strategic alignment.