Company profile:
- Providing irrigation equipment in the 1950’s, this company grew at home and abroad. They expanded product offerings into the utility, infrastructure, & telecommunications industries
- Revenues in 2010: > $1.9 billion
- Four divisions across six countries with greater than fifty sites and more than 9000 employees
Business situation
Rapid growth organically and through acquisitions drove the need to standardize processes. They needed to do so across the new and existing facilities within and across each division. In addition to non-standard operational processes, HR practices and supply chain management were unique to each division. Each division was managed as separate business units with a great deal of success but at the loss of economies of scale. The leadership team needed to create a system that formalized best practices across the corporation.
Solution
Guidance was provided in strategy and its deployment to executive and divisional leadership. An executive level steering committee was formed where break-through objectives, annual improvement priorities and action items were developed, approved and formalized.
Each annual improvement priority was measured using results orientated metrics with resources assigned. Divisional leadership and plant management were trained and coached for a Lean/Six-Sigma system implementation. A corporate wide information systems program was developed to store, share, approve and implement all processes as best practices.
Benefits
A significant number of practices common across the divisions were consistent at the corporate level, such as: talent acquisition, employee retention, engineering design and testing.
Practices common within divisions across each site were consistent at the division level such as: production flow, material management, and work cells.
