Mas­ter­ing Growth Man­age­ment: How a Com­pa­ny Achieved 16.7% Pro­duc­tion Growth

INTRODUCTION

Ensur­ing oper­a­tional excel­lence is cru­cial to man­age growth. This enables man­u­fac­tur­ers to effec­tive­ly nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties that come with expand­ing prod­uct lines, machin­ery, work­force and mar­ket reach. Man­u­fac­tur­ers need to estab­lish and stan­dard­ise sys­tems, so that capac­i­ty uti­liza­tion, work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and equip­ment effi­cien­cy are optimised.

This approach dri­ves a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment, sup­ports bet­ter decision-making, and leads to sus­tain­able growth. In high­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­kets, effi­cient growth man­age­ment helps man­u­fac­tur­ers stay ahead, bet­ter meet cus­tomer demands, and main­tain their posi­tion as indus­try leaders.

THE CHALLENGE

The Client start­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing bicy­cle tyres and tubes some 50 years ago. With time, the com­pa­ny grew to become one of India’s lead­ing play­ers in the bicy­cle tyre indus­try and expand­ed into the man­u­fac­tur­ing of auto­mo­bile tyre. Today, the com­pa­ny is one of the top 5 indus­try lead­ers globally.

Dur­ing the last few decades, the organ­i­sa­tion grew expo­nen­tial­ly, and many prod­uct lines were intro­duced to cap­ture the mar­ket. How­ev­er, this mul­ti­di­men­sion­al growth in terms of machin­ery, SKUs, employ­ees, mar­kets and ser­vice areas cre­at­ed chal­lenges at ground lev­el. The com­pa­ny had lim­it­ed depend­able sys­tems to bank upon. Man­age­ment observed that there were oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve over­all busi­ness per­for­mance by ensur­ing estab­lish­ment and stan­dard­iza­tion of sys­tems to achieve oper­a­tional excellence.

Giv­en its sec­toral and region­al expe­ri­ence, Renoir was asked to under­take an analy­sis for this poten­tial Oper­a­tional Excel­lence oppor­tu­ni­ty. The pur­pose of the analy­sis was to under­stand where per­for­mance could be improved and by how much.

ANALYSIS & PROJECT APPROACH

The analy­sis deter­mined that there were indeed sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment. Fun­da­men­tal for the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the changes was the need to devel­op effec­tive man­age­ment con­trol sys­tems with­in Plan­ning, Pro­duc­tion, and Main­te­nance and Yield areas.

“The Renoir team put extra efforts and left no stone unturned in deliv­er­ing oper­a­tional excel­lence. They even ven­tured into areas such as Sales & Exports which were out of scope. Their efforts ensured pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment of more than 10% across all our units.”

Direc­tor

The focus of the approach was to improve plant’s capac­i­ty util­i­sa­tion by estab­lish­ing and improv­ing plan­ning sys­tems, improv­ing work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by reduc­ing plant down­time and prod­uct rejec­tions with the help of improved pro­duc­tion sys­tems and employ­ee train­ing, improve­ment in main­te­nance plan­ning & exe­cu­tion, reduc­tion in repairs and equip­ment break­downs with the help of improved Main­te­nance Systems.

The project com­menced with the selec­tion of a Task Force team con­sist­ing of com­pa­ny employ­ees who were ded­i­cat­ed full-time to the project. To man­age the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives and ensure par­tic­i­pa­tion from all key process own­ers, two Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs) were formed, involv­ing par­tic­i­pants from all key func­tions. Full time Renoir con­sul­tants along with a Project Leader sup­port­ed both the Task Force and MATs.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

To help achieve oper­a­tional excel­lence, among oth­ers, the fol­low­ing activ­i­ties were conducted:

1. Estab­lish­ment of Sales, Inven­to­ry, Oper­a­tions Plan­ning (SIOP) Process­es to reduce infor­ma­tion asym­me­try in high lev­el plan­ning and improve inter­de­part­men­tal coordination
2. Ini­ti­a­tion of Dai­ly meet­ings, prepa­ra­tion of a pro­duc­tion plan­ning tool and for­mal­iza­tion of man­pow­er plan­ning using tools for effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of month­ly SIOP process
3. Improv­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing the log­books at machine and oper­a­tor lev­els along with the enhance­ment of pro­duc­tion sys­tems through short inter­val con­trol, shift han­dover sys­tems etc.
4. Intro­duc­tion of an MIS sys­tem – a Dash­board that cap­tures data from all the areas on dai­ly basis and pro­vides out­put in the com­par­i­son of KPIs
5. Fur­ther process enhance­ments in Break­down memo, Pre­ven­tive Main­te­nance Plan, CLITA line walk etc.
6. Reg­u­lar reviews of sys­tem per­for­mance using dash­boards on a dai­ly, week­ly and month­ly basis to dis­cuss per­for­mance, insights gained, and actions to improve.
7. Review of employ­ee skill sets using skill matri­ces and intro­duc­ing train­ing plans and mod­ules to train multi-skill employees

At week 10 of the project, a time bound imple­men­ta­tion roadmap was approved that would not only resolve the pre­vail­ing issues in a sus­tain­able way but also estab­lish a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improvement.

Con­se­quent­ly, man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments were installed to improve process­es, KPIs along with tar­gets were set. The review mech­a­nism to mon­i­tor per­for­mance and progress for all lev­els was for­mal­ized. The flow of infor­ma­tion from source to deci­sion mak­ers was improved, so that there was time­ly res­o­lu­tion of issues relat­ed to production.

“Thanks to Project Pra­gati, we have seen an improve­ment in our process­es, sys­tems and cul­ture. The estab­lished sys­tems are act­ing as enablers in improv­ing our over­all performance.”

MD

One key focus area was the imple­men­ta­tion of man­age­ment con­trol sys­tems, so that per­for­mance gaps and more effec­tive mech­a­nisms could be iden­ti­fied to address issues. Giv­en there would be changes to work­ing prac­tices, it was essen­tial that all impact­ed staff were giv­en the nec­es­sary train­ing and coach­ing to ensure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of benefits.

RESULTS