Business Challenge
Dsm-firmenich, a €12+ billion Swiss Dutch global innovator in nutrition, health and beauty, requested post-integration support to realize value and synergies across sites by deployment of a cross-business unit Value Integration Program (VIP) aimed at leveraging legacy Manufacturing Excellence / Continuous Improvement (ME/CI) standards and practices to enable and anchor global excellence competences in a Make-to-Order (MtO) environment.
Based on a broad experience of supporting global transformation programs in the industry and with a proven track-record in managing front-line change management challenges, Accelerant was chosen to support this VIP roadmap towards World Class Operations.
Process
The first (design) phase was a collective effort between Accelerant, Group Operational Excellence (GOE) and Business Unit ME/CI experts and practitioners. A short intensive analysis was conducted at each of the 4 pilot sites (one from each business unit) to identify, quantify and prioritize areas of improvement across the full-scope of the plants. This involved performance baselining, order-to-cash process mapping, shop-floor deep-dives and improvement
workshops, to ensure full mobilization and buy-in of each organization. In parallel, a “One way of working” blueprint process was co-constructed at corporate level, based on the legacy of both companies in combination with proven best practices from Accelerant. The cornerstone of the solution was an aligned Performance Management System.
A seamless second (piloting) phase was executed under Accelerant’s program leadership, supported by local / regional BU practitioners, guided and monitored by GOE experts and governed by the Operations steering committee. Here, the team started to establish an internal project execution capability building, in combination with the implementation of the “One Way of working” standards across the 4 selected plants, to realize the identified benefits potential at each site. The scope was on driving capacity enhancement, productivity improvement, planning & scheduling optimization, inventory reduction and improving customer delivery performance.
Operational Strategy and Transformation
The structured approach, program management and governance of this transformation has enabled dsm-firmenich to:
- Create transparency and drive value creation in a uniform fashion across the sites / business units.
- Determine which standards, practices and capabilities need to be built to eventually run the program from the GOE function without external support.
- Revitalize similar programs in legacy sites – extend the system with learnings from other implementations allowing for renewed insights and energy.
- Allow smaller sites to adopt, scale effectively and still implement ME/CI initiatives with limited support from regional and global management.
- Maximize use of data and standardized digital information tools to support sustainable implementation of practices, analytics and performance management.
The targets derived from the newly defined Operational Strategy needed to be incorporated in the Value Integration program to make sure that the transformation effort would deliver on the challenges defined at the outset. A great deal of effort was to create full transparency on performance and practice baselines, a drive to understanding root causes and impact when reviewing deviations and opportunities, and detailed priority measures and results plans – to
ensure bottom-up agreement, ownership from site management and clear benefits tracking.
Implementation Capability building
The change management work at the outset focused on the culture and behavior at the shopfloor and across functional interfaces, as “One way of working” implies embracing a set of DNA-parameters. Alongside the DNA elements, other capabilities deemed to be crucial to the successful technical and tactical roll-out of the program were built into the Continuous Improvement, Global Operational Excellence and Site Management teams i.e. training on the
job, coaching and feedback on performance, supervisory skills, standard meeting routines, roles and responsibilities, and so on have allowed for a change for good in both leadership and employee performance.
To ensure a qualitative and sustainable roll-out of the program, dsm firmenich invested in the implementation capability of its people in both plants, business unit and at GOE level. A tailored training and coaching plan was put in place to assure that a team of taskforces was guided in both technical and tactical elements of the implementation. Whilst this internal capability has been essential for the further roll out of the program, it was also perceived by the participants as an investment in their personal development and career path.
Program & Performance Management
The crux has been to define a holistic set of Group standards and ME best practices, captured in playbooks, that can be deployed in a systematic and sustainable way across units and sites. To manage the processes in a sustainable way a robust performance management system was implemented, measuring and steering a selection of key success factors: an operational cockpit with centrally defined KPI’s that could be rolled out locally. This, together with a robust transformation governance design, provided good insight into program status, adherence to standards, achievement of deliverables, and early warning of deviations. With this system in place the GOE and x-BU steering committee was able to make fact-based decisions to adopt the program when and where required.
To facilitate easy adoption and “portability” of the standards to other (legacy) sites a lot of attention was focused on the deployment of digital tools to anchor performance management. These aimed to provide fast and clear insight into real-time performance, robust steering mechanisms to correct possible deviations from standards, and uniform reporting tools to support the program from the corporate excellence function. A Management of Change (MoC) process, designed and implemented to assure the CI aspect to the MtO standards, provided the GOE team with a proven system to manage progress across sites. Following the successful pilots, each business unit has been rolling out the standard blueprint approach (in their own respective ways), supported by the GOE, to further improve results and service its customers.
Soft results
- One Way of Working designed, implemented and adopted (blue print and playbooks).
- Implementation capability building for 15 taskforces in 4 Pilot Plants.
- Roll-out methodology adopted by all business units.