Continuous improvement has led to good results in Prohoc’s production services. Systematic development work will continue together with customers, learning from our own experiences.
Prohoc has seen a major growth spurt over the past three years. The growth has been partly organic and partly the result of business acquisitions. Growth is a natural consequence of the company having recruited significantly more employees who, with their own expertise, help to meet the needs of customer companies.
The growth in production services has been almost explosive; the number of employees has quadrupled from approximately 50 to 200. Naturally, this has also led to a multiplication of the number of roles that guide and develop operations. The organisational structure is now also easier to scale up to future needs.
Results already visible
With the strengthening of the organisation, continuous improvement has been implemented more systematically in production services. After the growth sprint, more proactive and systematic operations have been achieved, which reduces the need for “firefighting”. In addition to increasing the number of personnel and competencies, development capability has been strengthened by creating a clear operating method, providing the necessary tools, increasing transparency and employee involvement and arranging the necessary training.
“Clearly managed goal-oriented development activities, closer cooperation and strengthening of capabilities have relatively quickly resulted in significant improvements in performance, both in operations and in development activities and their quality,” says Lead Excellence Mikko Mattila.
Well-organised and continuous development is carried out in the long term, piece by piece, while analysing, reflecting and clearly prioritising. It is important that the development activities support Prohoc’s own objectives and those agreed with the customer. To support operations, better production performance metrics and illustrations have been developed to help to measure the achievement of goals and allocate measures.
“As a strategic partner, we are able to improve the production performance and provide added value to the customer. Jointly agreed goals and clear operating models ensure long-term impact,” says Matias Träskbäck, who is in charge of customer strategic partnership.
The benefits of continuous improvement in production are straightforward to measure in financial terms, but development efforts also add value to the personnel, for example, by reducing overload and stress and allowing time to focus on meaningful activities.
100-day goals
Prohoc’s mission is to be a high-value partner and to continuously develop its processes, together with its customers. Customer orientation, openness and inclusion, the measurement of results and continuous learning are important factors on this journey. Success requires the right tools and a shared understanding of the application of Lean principles both with the customer and internally to make it possible to communicate in the same language, whether visualised, spoken or written.
So called 100-days plan, which is managed in a similar way as a project, has been implemented as an organised and structured way for the team and management to manage and monitor development measures. Preliminary discussions include reviewing the goals of the customer and Prohoc as well as previously identified development needs. The measures that will be focused on over the next 3–4 months are determined based on these. After this, each service focuses on achieving its own development efforts, and Mikko updates the prioritisation, goals and implementation of the development efforts with the customer in monthly development meetings.
Lean toolkit in use
At the beginning of the development period, targeted value stream mapping is carried out at selected sites to identify factors that slow down, disrupt or prevent the flow. Such factors referred to as waste in Lean terminology may include waiting or stopping work, back and forth or unnecessary movement, corrective or repetitive work, or excessive work in progress (WIP). Based on the analyses, the target state is outlined and a development plan is drawn up or a previous plan is revised or specified further.
To identify points of friction and bottlenecks in the process, long-term monitoring or simulation may be required to analyse the impact of different variables on production throughput. Such variables may include different cycle times of manufactured products at different stages of the process and personnel resources, for example. Such cases require complex analysis models to understand the effects of different variables and the constraints imposed by production facilities on the production flow at a more precise level.
The aim is to have as little variation as possible in the main and support processes of production and to be able to anticipate and prepare for any upcoming disruptions and problems without them significantly delaying production.
A customer-oriented operating model resulted in a new role
Matias Träskbäck, formerly Head of Business, Production Services, will take on the new role of Senior Vice President, Strategic Accounts.
“Going forward, I will be responsible for providing Prohoc’s full service offering to strategic key customers and developing them together with the key personnel team. In this role, it is important to have a broad understanding of the customers’ entire business, strategy and challenges so that we can offer tailored high-value services,” says Matias.
