Case Study: Material Handling & Equipment Company

Case Studies

Material Handling & Equipment Company

Project	Design, Development & Implementation of a Lean Process Management System , for a Leading, Multi-site Material Handling Equipment Corporation in order to achieve a Leaner & More Efficient Enterprise in their new & used equipment sales & servicing products as well as other product lines
Objectives	Objectives for this series of engagements were to improve overall business performance and distribute the responsibility for management of the day to day business operations among the key managers of the each business unit to better manage company overall growth.
Unique Issues	This company has grown to include branch sales and service locations across North Texas as well as acquisition of another site in Kansas City, Mo. They have also expanded their business resulting in establishing new stand alone business units for two additional product lines and associated services.
Results	During the Insight1, Inc. engagement for this client, the company’s revenues increased by 45% and profits increased by 70%. These results were achieved by leading the company through a transition from a non-process oriented work force to a lean process based work force. In the course of leading this transition, Insight 1, Inc. facilitated the following activities with this client: Developed & implemented a lean process based Management System for the Client’s 3 major business areas and the as well as the Finance processes. This activity improved overall productivity and included the following resultant accomplishments: Diagrammed thirty-two (32) major processes. Developed and trained 235 procedures. Installed and trained all employees on a document control system (Insight 1’s OneWindow® System). Trained forty-seven (47) Process Owners and their associated process participants. Trained eleven (11) internal auditors. Insight 1, Inc. identified several areas where additional automation of several Manual Processes would increase accuracy, productivity and efficiency. These included: Haul Ticket Application. The Haul Ticket Application (for tracking vehicle movements) was developed to provide a centralized application to store all Haul Tickets. The application provided easy access, status visibility, and prevented duplicate data entry into logs and systems. It also assisted in assigning responsibility to individuals or a team to assure the completeness and accuracy of the Haul Ticket information. Sales Tracking Database. The Sales Tracking Database was created to provide a centralized database that stores additional sales order information that could not have been store in the ERP system. The database provided a more efficient way of tracking the status of all sales orders. On Line Help Desk. The company needed to more effectively provide technical support to their internal system users. The IT department also needed a system that could track and prioritize trouble tickets from any branch location Insight 1, Inc. led the company in reorganizing and consolidating their technical support team to more effectively provide needed support. In order to facilitate this improved support, an Online IT Help Desk was designed and implemented to help the company effectively respond to any IT issues by documenting, prioritizing, assigning technician responsibility and subsequent troubleshooting and problem resolution. Rental Vehicle Schedule Database. The company manually kept track of all their rental expirations and renewal information on manually maintained whiteboards. The ERP system could only provide the information by viewing rental contracts 1 at a time. The Rental Schedule Database was engineered to pull information from the ERP system and format into reports that would be customizable by the end user. Using the database, employees can produce a listing of all rental contracts by expiration dates, customer, or unit types. With the information in this format, a user can easily determine which rental contract needed attention without having to manually transfer the information on to the Rental Boards. Service Aisle Status Boards. When service throughput and service order scheduling became a bottleneck, Insight 1, Inc. led the service department management in the development and implementation of status boards for each work bay on the service aisle. The board is updated periodically by the technician in the bay using codes to provide current status of the work. This made work stoppages and other problems readily visible to the line supervisors and increased the throughput of the service area by eliminating un-necessary delays and stoppages due to maintenance issues, parts availability as well as improved visibility for scheduling new service jobs to technicians. • We utilized the work at the initial Material Handling Equipment Forklift Sales and Services facility as the basis for future migration and modification at additional sites and for additional product lines.
Description of Services	Defined and facilitated the development of a new Operational Management System based on Process Management methodologies directed at improving overall business performance. The tasks included the following: Facilitated definition of a hierarchical set of process diagrams for the Product and Service Life cycle for the business Facilitated definition of a hierarchical set of process diagrams for the management infrastructure. Defined Standard Operating Procedures for lower level processes making up the major processes. Facilitated the assignment of process owners for all processes. Trained Process Owners and authors in methodology for writing Standard Operating Procedures using the Insight 1, Inc. provided template. Facilitated and assisted the staff in developing, reviewing, approving and releasing 235 Standard Operating Procedures. Provided and installed the Insight 1, Inc. One Window® System for providing instant access of process management system documents. Trained an Internal Audit Team for conducting periodic audits of the process management system for verification of practice vs. documentation. Identified, managed and implemented a number of separate improvement projects. Some of these included: Development and Implementation of a Corrective Action Database for tracking process Corrective Action Requests (CARs) Development and Implementation of a Training Data Base to assist in managing training of all personnel and maintaining their current training status Developed a database that eliminated the manual system of tracking Rental Units Inventory and their current status. Developed an application that automated, simplified and improved the process for planning, scheduling and implementing equipment deliveries and pickups for service. The above tasks were expanded to include the processes deployed for managing the Financial Management and Accounting functions for all business units. • Ongoing activities are replicating these tasks to extend to new Product Lines and Services recently broken out and established as new business units at a new facility in Saginaw, Texas. These included process management systems for the following business units: Warehouse Materials and Services Utility Vehicle Sales and Service Retail Sales • The above has led to identification of additional improvement projects we will facilitate with this client. These include: Redefinition and implementation of a improved Web Site effectively providing for an e-business segment of the business. Implementation of an Auto-Quoting System Implementation of a semi automated Incoming Call Management System to assure that prospective sales leads are serviced in a prompt manner.
Methodologies	Utilized Insight 1, Inc.’s unique lean methodologies for facilitation and documentation of hierarchical business processes directed at improving productivity, cost and business performance.