Background:

A family-owned manufacturing company run by its founders and having turnover north of 600 cr. per annum sought out our support in its TPM implementation after we delivered a capability enhancement project for its sales and marketing team.

 

Approach:

TPM was a new idea for us at that point of time. We took out time, did research, and read all we can find about Lean Implementation Challenges – we went to drawing boards and did a lot of due diligence to understand the nitty-gritty of TPM and we found out that the major alignment of key stakeholders is just as well as the mindset is key – operational excellence shall follow.

Overall, it is not a cost reduction program nor a manufacturing tactic but a business strategy. We all know that culture eats strategy for breakfast. So, we designed a Behavioral Intervention Program Plan for the key stakeholders with the objective to develop Lean Mindset which is to seek continuous improvement within the organization. Our main question to them was are you a lean organization or an organization just doing lean stuff?

 

We delivered the program to the key stakeholders in the following steps:

• We started with a pre-intervention assessment on leadership styles, communication styles, values, culture, and behavioral styles of leaders. Based on the assessment, we defined the need for gaps to be fulfilled and the breaking of walls due to interpersonal issues between key stakeholders. Also, it gave us an insight into what extent the mindset or understanding is there for Lean as it was simply focused on the production department.

• Case Study Representation and Implementation – We used the example of Wiremold, an epitome and pioneer of Lean implementation to make the mindset travel across the length and breadth of top management. We also highlighted key learnings from Sundaram Clayton – which is an Indian pioneer in TPM.

• The assignment aimed to set right the inner conditions, bringing out cooperation to support transformation and innovative action which was needed, and the leaders thanked us to enable them to be the torchbearers of this change across the organization.