Hands on
"We did not expect that production could be turned around by so much that quickly."
A major transport infrastructure programme was running behind schedule, in part because poor supply from the fabrication shop was causing delays for the onsite teams.
We tackled the problems on a number of fronts. As well as re-allocating tasks between team members so the supply of materials to the key production activities was never interrupted, we provided skills training. This training was followed up by giving the less experienced staff the opportunity to work with the most productive team members.
We also redesigned the stores and coded raw materials so that they could be retrieved more quickly. Finally, completed work was immediately categorised and stored ready for distribution to the work sites.
The net result was that the fabrication shop doubled its output in 10 weeks and sustained that improvement, totally eliminating the delays and helping to bring the whole programme back on track.
