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We are a global management consultancy that delivers exceptional outcomes and sustainable change

Case Study

A South Amer­i­can pri­vate san­i­ta­tion com­pa­ny improved its field pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by 25% — and per­ma­nent­ly trans­formed its operations

2023/03/27

KEY RESULTS

After 22 weeks:

87% 

Aver­age pro­gram­ming time per team reduced 

25% 

Sched­ule com­pli­ance improved
(75% vs 60% baseline) 

31% 

Ser­vice order can­cel­la­tion went down
(24% vs 35% baseline) 

80% 

Ser­vice order can­cel­la­tion went down
(1% vs 5% baseline) 

About The Client

Our client is one of the largest pri­vate san­i­ta­tion com­pa­nies in South Amer­i­ca, serv­ing 16 mil­lion peo­ple across more than 100 munic­i­pal­i­ties. The units oper­ate in water and waste­water ser­vices, through part­ner­ships with state-owned and pri­vate com­pa­nies, as well as with state and munic­i­pal governments.

The clien­t’s oper­a­tions com­ple­ment pub­lic invest­ments to ensure uni­ver­sal cov­er­age of water sup­ply and waste­water treat­ment. At the same time, they also devel­op and improve on inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, being entire­ly com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion and help­ing devel­op and improve life qual­i­ty of its sur­round­ing communities.

Our exist­ing rela­tion­ship with this client has result­ed in a deep under­stand­ing of their needs, require­ments and over­all busi­ness oper­a­tions. When one of their units want­ed to improve their pro­duc­tion plan­ning, we knew where to begin our work.

What Was Discovered

Our ini­tial analy­sis quick­ly iden­ti­fied sev­er­al aspects that could be improved:

  1. Over­all field pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was low
  2. Work orders were gen­er­at­ed local­ly and were sub­jec­tive­ly scheduled
  3. Pro­gram­ming and rout­ing of ser­vices were done manually.
  4. There was an absence of key indi­ca­tors, and a lack of effec­tive exe­cu­tion control
  5. Struc­tured action plan­ning was weak, with lack of clar­i­ty between local and cor­po­rate man­age­ment roles

As a result, a 22-week trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram was set up with the aim of:

  1. Restruc­tur­ing the back office to cre­ate a pro­duc­tion plan­ning & con­trol (PPC) department
  2. Imple­ment­ing changes to exist­ing process­es and sys­tems using our Focus Process® to cre­ate a work­ing stan­dard for all units
  3. Map­ping all crit­i­cal processes
  4. Cre­at­ing new work instruc­tions and to-do explain­er videos of their processes

“Renoir has been key in help­ing us change the way we sched­ule field teams, trans­form the units’ decen­tral­ized sched­ules to a cor­po­rate­ly cen­tral­ized mod­el, and ensure the same per­for­mance man­age­ment routines.”

What Was Implemented

Using our patent­ed Focus Process®, we devel­oped a trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme specif­i­cal­ly to pro­mote own­er­ship and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We mapped, reviewed, and cri­tiqued exist­ing process­es, pro­ce­dures and key ele­ments of the com­mer­cial man­age­ment system.

From here, our con­sul­tants worked togeth­er with project team mem­bers from the clien­t’s side to devel­op new per­for­mance indi­ca­tors and train the client-side lead­er­ship to suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment the roll-out in oth­er oper­at­ing units.

18 weeks in, we start­ed see­ing tan­gi­ble and sus­tain­able changes that quick­ly became routine:

  1. Train­ing in field stud­ies to iden­ti­fy ‘bad actors’ that impact per­for­mance and devel­op solu­tions that add val­ue to the work exe­cu­tion process
  2. Devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of struc­tured man­age­ment rou­tines that focus on
  3. results for the pro­gram­mers, PPC man­age­ment team and field management
  4. Def­i­n­i­tion and struc­tur­ing of the para­me­ters nec­es­sary for the smooth func­tion­ing of the auto­mat­ic pro­gram­ming process
  5. Imple­men­ta­tion of mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol rou­tines for field teams
  6. Devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of a dash­board, with the nec­es­sary KPIs to man­age the area

THE RESULTS

The results were extreme­ly encour­ag­ing. After 22 weeks:

87% 

Aver­age pro­gram­ming time per team reduced 

25% 

Sched­ule com­pli­ance improved
(75% vs 60% baseline) 

31% 

Ser­vice order can­cel­la­tion went down
(24% vs 35% baseline) 

80% 

Ser­vice order can­cel­la­tion went down
(1% vs 5% baseline) 

These results also trans­lat­ed into long-term benefits:

The new­ly cre­at­ed PPC office now meets the demands of the Cor­po­rate Com­mer­cial Board 

Gov­er­nance has been devel­oped to cov­er the pro­gram­ming of com­mer­cial ser­vices and cus­tomer reg­is­tra­tion changes, through the cen­tral­iza­tion of 15 units 

A respon­si­bil­i­ties matrix and struc­tured man­age­ment rou­tines was cre­at­ed that fos­tered greater trust in the per­for­mance data 

As a result of improve­ments relat­ing to the sched­ul­ing and exe­cu­tion KPIs, we were able to deliv­er real val­ue to the client. We suc­cess­ful­ly showed that the train­ing of teams, imple­ment­ing more effi­cient process­es, and devel­op­ing struc­tured rou­tines, can sig­nif­i­cant­ly help man­age change. This in turn devel­ops a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment, as well as in the com­mit­ment to oper­a­tional excellence.

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