Adopting a Lean Approach to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report

Adopting a Lean Approach
to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report
Karim Riad MAZOUNI
Business Consulting
karim.mazouni@elca.ch
Geneva, June 3rd, 2016

■ Founded in 1968 as Electro-Calcul for monitoring
the Grande Dixence dam
■ Employees Over 700 employees, mostly highly skilled
(IT) professionals with university degrees
■ Offices Lausanne (headquarters), Zurich, Geneva, Bern,
Madrid, Paris, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
■ Turnover CHF 107,1 million in 2015 (+5.2% growth)
■ Quality Standards ISO 9001 (since 1993), ISO 14001 (since 2011),
CMMI level 3 (since 2007)
■ Project Experience > 1‘000 customer projects in ten years
■ Awards
ABOUT ELCA
| 03.06.2016 | 2Adopting a Lean Approach to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report | K.R. Mazouni | BAFS 2016
ELCA is one of the biggest independent Swiss IT solution providers in Switzerlandʼs
and a leader in the fields of software development, system integration, business
consulting and application management.

linkedin.com/in/krmazouni
ABOUT ME
| 03.06.2016 |Adopting a Lean Approach to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report | K.R. Mazouni | BAFS 2016 3
1991
1998
2000
2008
2014
2015

ABOUT YOU
LeanVSM
Toyoda
Kanban
Gemba
Yokoten
Ohno
Kaizen

GOALS OF THIS TALK
■ Raise awareness
■ Share experience
■ Yokoten !!!
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

AGENDA
Adopting a Lean Approach to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report | K.R. Mazouni | BAFS 2016
• Lean Thinking
• Value Stream Mapping
• Case Report
• Lessons Learned
6| 03.06.2016 |

14 PRINCIPLES
 Long-Term
 Flow
 Pull
 Less Variability & Overburden
 Stop & Fix
 Master Norms
 Simple Visual Management
 Good Technology
 Leader-Teachers from Within
 Develop Exceptional People
 Help Partners to Be Lean
 Go See
 Consensus
 Reflection & Kaizen
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
 Long-Term Great Engineers
 Manager-Teacher
 Cadence
 Cross-Functional
 Team Room
 Entrepreneurial Product
Manager
 Set-based Concurrent
Development
 Create More Knowledge
THE LEAN HOUSE
based on “Scaling Lean & Agile Development” by Craig LARMAN & Bas VODDE
FOUNDATION
 Management applies and teaches lean thinking
 Management bases decisions on this long-term philosophy
RESPECT FOR PEOPLE
 Respect your Customer
 Develop People, Build Products
 No Wasteful Work
 Teams Improve Their Practices
 Build Stable Partners
 Develop Teams
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
 Go See
 Kaizen
- Spread Knowledge
- Small, Relentless
- Retrospectives
- 5 Whys
- Eyes for Waste
 Perfection Challenge
 Work Toward Flow
GOAL
 Sustainable Shortest Lead Time
 Best Quality and Value
 Most Customer Delight
 Lowest Cost
 High Morale
 Safety

AGENDA
• Lean Thinking
• Case Report
• Lessons Learned
8| 03.06.2016 |

APPROACHES TO PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
© Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation by Karen Martin; Mike Osterling - McGraw-Hill, 2013
 White box
 Internal focus
 Black box
 Customer focus

VALUE STREAM
■ “A value stream is the sequence of activities required to design, produce,
and deliver a good or service to a customer, and it includes the dual flows of
information and material.”
■ A value stream map is a highly visual storyboard of how work progresses
 Comes from “material and information flows” a visual mapping
technique used at Toyota
 At the core of the Lean thinking

© Value Stream Analysis: Beyond the Mechanics - Part 2 (Mapping Execution) by Karen Martin; http://www.ksmartin.com/webinars/
PROCESS TIME VS LEAD TIME

TYPES OF PROCESS TIME

MEASURING QUALITY UPSTREAM
■ Percent Complete and Accurate (%C&A)
 % of the time work delivered is “usable as is” by the next in chain
 usable as is => no need to CAC (Correct, Add, Clarify)
 Assesses the quality upstream
■ Example:
 I am at the back office, my job is to fulfill customer’s orders
 I receive customer’s orders from the front office
 If 30% of the time I have to CAC, I assess the front office quality as 70%

1ST WALK: IDENTIFY PROCESS BLOCKS

2ND WALK : MEASURE FLOW

2ND WALK : MAPPING TO IT SYSTEMS & APPLICATIONS

2ND WALK : UNDERSTAND BARRIERS TO FLOW

COMPLETE VALUE STREAM MAP

AGENDA
• Lean Thinking
• Case Report
• Lessons Learned
19| 03.06.2016 |

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

IMPROVE “ORDER TO CASH” PROCESS FOR A SERVICE COMPANY
■ The Service Company provides services to its customers by sending workers
to customers’ premises
■ The Service Company needs to improve its “Order to Cash” (O2C) process in
order to:
 shorten the lead time
 improve accuracy
 improve efficiency

ESTIMATED PLANNING & EFFORT: 30 MAN-DAYS DURING 3 MONTHS
Initiate Examine Envision Recommend Finalize
s23
01.06.2015
s26
22.06.2015
s28
06.07.2015
s37
07.09.2015
15 M-D
Kick-Off Project Status Project Status Closing
 Current State  Future state  Roadmap
s35
24.08.2015
Project Status
 Executive
Summary
 Planning
s24
08.06.2015
5 M-D 5 M-D 3 M-D2 M-D
Project Status
EFFORT
DELIVERABLES

INTERVIEW GOALS
■ Understand how the O2C process actually works in each region
■ Feel the atmosphere in the field
■ See the IT tools in action
■ Gather improvement ideas

INTERVIEW SYNOPSIS
■ Key Questions
 What is your vision of the «Order to Cash» (O2C) process ?
 What role do you play at each step of the process ?
 What tools do yo use ?
 What problems do you encounter ?
 What solutions do you see to these problems ?
 How does the process perform ? (Process Time, Lead Time, %C&A)
■ Setup
 1 hour discussion and interactive post-it board
 Short demos of the tools that you use

LAU — SALES SUPPORT: INTERVIEW BOARD

FINDING TYPES
ICON MEANING
 • Good practice
 • Pain point
? • Open point
! • Improvement idea
 • Worth to mention

LAU — SALES SUPPORT: KEY POINTS
ID TYPE DESCRIPTION
LAU-001 
• Offer data from the “Fiche Projet” is entered multiple
times in several documents (Pipeline, Reporting).
• Sales Support does not have access to PCE.
• In parallel, Planning enters the same data in PCE.
LAU-002 
• Sales Support cannot know which offers/orders are
actually planned (10% of offers bypass Sales Support).
LAU-003 
• An offer can be done in 15 mn and sent after about 48 h.
• The signature process for an offer can take up to 3 days.
LAU-004 !
• If Accounting would have access to Reporting it could
monitor offers/orders.
LAU-005  • “Fiche Projet” data is generally good (80%).

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
■ People
 Cooperative
 HAPPY to be involved
 Engaged
■ Processes & Tools
 Processes are complicated
 Tools are not reliable
 Each region found its own path to operate
■ Organization
 Put back the focus on customers AND employees
 Support functions MUST develop a culture of service
 Organization structure and roles should be clarified AND communicated

MAIN BARRIERS TO FLOW
DESCRIPTION RELATED FINDING IDS
• Offer/order data is entered multiple times in
several tools.
• LAU-001, GVA-001, GVA-006
• Offer/order data must be approved at
multiple levels.
• LAU-003, GVA-004, GVA-018,
• ZRH-003, BSL-003, BRN-002, BRN-003
• Customer address checks are time
consuming.
• LAU-006, LAU-010, LAU-017, GVA-013,
ZRH-010, BSL-004
• HMY-related issues hinder productivity. • LAU-008, LAU-013, GVA-011, ZRH-008
• PCE-related issues hinder productivity. • LAU-014, GVA-020, ZRH-002, ZRH-009,
ZRH-015, BRN-004, BRN-014, PCE-001
• Pre-planning is done in separate tools and
re-entered in HMY.
• LAU-009, BRN-005, BRN-009
Barriers to flow are issues which slow down the O2C process.
Each barrier to flow relates to findings described in the next slides.

VALUE STREAM MAPPING WORKSHOP

FUTURE O2C PROCESS: KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES (1/2)
■ Minimize Multiple Inputs
 Data is entered only once in one tool
■ Standard Documents
 All areas use standard document templates (offers, order confirmations)
 PCE use these templates to automatically generate the documents
=> no more manual editing for simple offers
■ Simplified Signature
 The new signature policy enforces delegation and enables quicker
feedback to customers

FUTURE O2C PROCESS: KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES (2/2)
■ Accounting Approval < 4 Hours
 Accounting approves all offers and all new customers in less than 4 hours
■ Unique Planning Tool
 All pre-planning and planning activities use a unique tool (PPS)
■ Unique Approval for Monthly Invoices
 Branch Managers only approve the delivered service hours
=> no more approval of invoices

FUTURE O2C PROCESS: ZOOM I
Zoom I

ZOOM I. DIRECT ORDER FROM AN EXISTING CUSTOMER

STEP A.2.1. «TAKE ORDER»
■ A customer order can reach CUSTOMER via several channels
 E-mail
 Phone
 Alarm Partner’s tools
■ Several roles can take orders
 Branch Manager (BM)
 Sales Support
 Pre-Planning
 Planning
■ BM is responsible of the content of the Project Form and the Calculation Sheet
 The Project Form and Calculation Sheet are standard documents used in
all areas

TRANSFORMATION PROJECTS

ROADMAP WORKSHOP
Organisation Stream
Training Stream
IT Stream

ROADMAP: SUMMARY
Organisation Stream
Training Stream
IT Stream
2015-Q4 2016-Q1 2016-Q2 2016-Q3 2016-Q4
DEFINE ROLES
(ORG-1)
DEFINE
DOCUMENTS
(IT-1)
ALIGN ORG.
(ORG-2)
IMPROVE
HR PROCESSES
(ORG-3)
PCE ORDER
FORM
(IT-2)
GENERATE
DOCUMENTS
(IT-1)
DO
O2C TRAINING
(TRN-1)
REVIEW PCE
PERMISSIONS
(IT-3)
PCE
USER LICENSES
(IT-4)
DEFINE
PCE TRAINING
(TRN-2)
DO
PCE TRAINING
(TRN-2)
ADJUST PCE
PERMISSIONS
(IT-3)
SANITIZE
CUSTOMER DB
(IT-5)

AGENDA
• Lean Thinking
• Case Report
• Lessons Learned
40| 03.06.2016 |

■ Changing corporate culture is a long process
■ It is essential (but not easy) to convince the whole management
team
■ “Go See” is really a powerful tool
 I wish I could actually do it with the workgroup
■ “Forcing” people to collaborate in workshops is a game changer

Adopting a Lean Approach to Improve Business Processes: A Case Report

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