Achiev­ing Excel­lence in Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing: Lessons Learned from a Beau­ty Conglomerate

INTRODUCTION

The Client in this project is one of the largest beau­ty fran­chis­es in the world. The com­pa­ny devel­ops and man­u­fac­tur­ers beau­ty prod­ucts in two loca­tions, and also sells its prod­ucts online, through direct sales and in part­ner­ship with major retailers.

THE CHALLENGE

Renoir was invit­ed to analyse process­es and the man­age­ment con­trol sys­tem (MCS) in the Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing and Sup­port areas in order to under­stand how cur­rent lev­els of oper­a­tional per­for­mance were impact­ing costs and results.

OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS & PROJECT APPROACH

An ini­tial three-week analy­sis was per­formed, which iden­ti­fied oppor­tu­ni­ties relat­ing to:

1. Plan­ning and pro­gram­ming of tests and pilots of new products.
2. Inte­gra­tion of inter­faces for man­ag­ing knowl­edge and experiences.
3. Ade­qua­cy of the prac­tices for record­ing lessons learned.
4. Process­es for launch­ing new prod­ucts and their timing.

The analy­sis also eval­u­at­ed the organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing, com­par­ing it with world-class stan­dards. This added addi­tion­al clar­i­fi­ca­tion about which process­es need­ed improve­ment, how the man­age­ment sys­tem could be stan­dard­ised and what best prac­tice KPIs could be installed.

The main objec­tive of the project was to redesign the prod­uct engi­neer­ing man­age­ment sys­tem of the Group with tools that pro­vid­ed man­agers with the nec­es­sary per­for­mance infor­ma­tion and in a time­ly man­ner for deci­sion making.

This objec­tive was to be achieved by:

1. Review­ing the flow of plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of tests and project pilots with the imple­men­ta­tion of man­age­ment mech­a­nisms for all the steps that pre­cede and fol­low these events.
2. Strength­en­ing the flow of infor­ma­tion to iden­ti­fy demands, inter­faces, risks and impor­tant mile­stones in the process.
3. Imple­ment­ing and guar­an­tee­ing the sys­tem of cap­tur­ing, using, and man­ag­ing knowl­edge in the prod­uct devel­op­ment process.
4. Engi­neer­ing, increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and assertive­ness in new ven­tures, through reten­tion, qual­i­fi­ca­tion, trace­abil­i­ty, appli­ca­tion, and evo­lu­tion of knowl­edge for the lessons learned.

To fos­ter involve­ment and own­er­ship, two Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs) were cre­at­ed with a focus on Process Man­age­ment and Knowl­edge Man­age­ment. A Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, com­posed of the Clien­t’s Senior Man­age­ment, met every two weeks to assess progress, pro­vide guid­ance, for­mal­ly approve pro­pos­als for changes in process­es and sys­tems and address any bar­ri­ers to progress.

IMPLEMENTATION

The pro­gram fol­lowed the Renoir Focus Process. Part of this tasks was to val­i­date and agree sources of oper­at­ing data such that the pos­i­tive impact on per­for­mance could be mon­i­tored through­out the engagement.

The eight weeks con­clud­ed with the Strate­gic Inte­gra­tion Meet­ing (SIM), where the two MATs pre­sent­ed the SIM Map to the Steer­ing Com­mit­ted and where the imple­men­ta­tion plan was approved. Imple­men­ta­tion start­ed with the instal­la­tion of the busi­ness process review methodology.

All new tools, flows and process­es were built in a col­lab­o­ra­tive man­ner with the MATs. The instal­la­tion of new rou­tines, process adjust­ments and new pro­ce­dures was car­ried out by the MAT mem­bers, cre­at­ing a sense of own­er­ship, and ensur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the solutions.

Train­ing on the new prac­tices was tar­get­ed at those with the scope of the changes and a RACI Matrix was estab­lished to pro­vide clar­i­ty around roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties with­in the new ways of working.

KEY RESULTS

Imple­men­ta­tion of the Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem in two units.