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unleashing potential

Continuous Improvement in Logistics

Using Continuous Improvement (CI) to deliver improved service

A major logistics company which is engaged in delivering over £800m of supplies to the UK health sector was committed to deliver radically improved levels of service to its customers.

To achieve this the company considered that CI appeared to offer a way of raising the level of its performance in serving our customers and, in the process, living the values of the organisation.

Putting CI to the test

Echelon was engaged to work with the organisation to identify some critical ‘live’ service issues and use these as a learning framework for developing ‘CI champions’ within its staff who would then be able to facilitate the sustained adoption of CI’s principles and practices throughout the organisation.

Echelon was commissioned to train two cross-functional teams in the principles of CI and then coach them, over a three-month period, in the practise of CI using the two 'live' examples of processes the company wished to improve: scheduling the deliveries we make to our customers and the process for introducing new products to our catalogue.

Each team of seven was made up of individuals with a thorough knowledge of the issues and others to whom these were unfamiliar. Their objective was to deliver a first phase of improvements for their projects within three months and in the process build competence as practitioners of the CI process.

To demonstrate the commitment of senior management, each team included a team sponsor from senior management.

The company learned to appreciate that that CI is a process of successive improvements and that change should, therefore, be applied systematically using Deming’s PDCA cycle of: Plan, Do, Check, Act.

Customer first

CI starts with the needs of the customer and works back into the process. Identifying the gap between what the customer needs and what the process currently delivers is a key mindset of CI.

This often requires a shift in perspective from ‘product out’ thinking (‘Once it leaves here, it’s someone else’s responsibility.’) to ‘customer-in’ thinking (‘I’ll check with the customer that it’s arrived safely, that they are satisfied and, if there’s a problem, I’ll put it right.’).

The ‘customer in’ approach aims to achieve a harmonious duet between the ‘voice of the customer’ and the ‘voice of the process’. CI, then, becomes a process of successively ‘tuning’ the process by using the PDCA cycle repeatedly to match the voice of the customer.

What did CI deliver?

The improvements in the process for the introduction of new products has clarified the process for the company’s customers, eliminated a bottleneck and increased customer satisfaction. This has lead to increased customer uptake and the company will to monitor activity to evaluate the long-term impact.

The customer delivery project has also provided some quality benefits. We have a more streamlined and faster process, with clear benefits to our customer base.

Learnings for the organisation

One of the company’s training managers, who was also a member of one of the teams in the project captured the essence of what had been learned in these top ten tips for CI:

  1. Before starting a CI project ensure that project sponsors understand the CI process and their role within it.

  2. Choose team members carefully for the skills, knowledge and commitment they will bring to the project.

  3. Ensure that the CI project brief is clear and understood by all – a project is only as good as its brief.

  4. Appoint a facilitator to manage the process who is strong enough to act as the guardian of the CI process, can resist attempts to fast-track the process and is able to adopt a ‘little and often’ approach to guiding the process.

  5. Be prepared to be flexible in the use of the techniques of CI but stick rigidly to the principles.

  6. Adopt ‘customer-in’ thinking as a challenge at every stage of the CI process.

  7. Keep focused on the project objectives – don’t chase after attractive but irrelevant data and information.

  8. Plan every stage of the process and keep to the plan – unless there are good reasons to change it!.

  9. Be innovative – if the right tools don’t exist for what you need – make them.

  10. Celebrate success!