A util­i­ties com­pa­ny improves pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and saves costs

The com­pa­ny belongs to one of Brazil’s largest pri­vate group of com­pa­nies. It devel­ops solu­tions to pre­serve nat­ur­al resources and improve people’s qual­i­ty of life through its oper­a­tions in the water and sewage, util­i­ties and waste sector.

Key results

6%

reduc­tion in fleet cost 

The chal­lenge

The com­pa­ny want­ed to reduce costs, pro­vide bet­ter ser­vice and increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with­out impact­ing mar­gins to improve competitiveness.

What we did

We worked with the man­age­ment team to iden­ti­fy and imple­ment process improve­ments, increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of field teams, increase ser­vice lev­els and reduce oper­at­ing costs to pre­serve its mar­gin. We involved employ­ees in the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of the solu­tions. Each pro­posed man­age­ment sys­tem tool had been designed and devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with inter­nal staff to make it fit-for-purpose. The tools and rou­tines that were cre­at­ed, enabled addi­tion­al con­trol over the process­es, which were sup­port­ed with spe­cif­ic KPI’s, enabled man­age­ment to make swift deci­sions based on facts.

Net­work management

We reor­gan­ised the company’s equip­ment and main­te­nance man­age­ment process.We also changed the focus of the exe­cu­tion process from cor­rec­tive to pre­ven­tive. This led to a num­ber of ben­e­fits includ­ing an increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and improved oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty, which con­tributed to reduc­ing vol­ume losses.

Com­mer­cial area – read­ing and revenue

We devel­oped a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty man­age­ment sys­tem to bet­ter sup­port com­mer­cial field agents. This sys­tem was designed to improve their over­all effec­tive­ness. We also over­came irreg­u­lar­i­ties in its plan­ning tar­gets and tasks by defin­ing stan­dard times and bet­ter plan­ning of resources, which improved over­all productivity.

Oper­a­tional support/Contract management

A man­age­ment mod­el was devel­oped to improve the effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the oper­a­tions teams. This was done by ensur­ing that busi­ness guide­lines were adhered to by review­ing com­pli­ance of the required ser­vice lev­els, as well as the expect­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty stip­u­lat­ed in con­ces­sions. The inter­nal and admin­is­tra­tive process­es were redesigned while activ­i­ties and work sched­ules were resized and bal­anced. We also tight­ened the con­trol on out­sourced ser­vices by review­ing the approval cri­te­ria for out­sourc­ing to reduce demand and payment.

Results

Some of the ben­e­fits obtained from the pro­gramme included:

• Week­ly auto­mat­ed report gen­er­a­tion on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and over­time result­ed in man­pow­er cost sav­ings of 15%.
• The pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of field teams improved by 15% fol­low­ing bet­ter util­i­sa­tion, effi­cien­cy and team management.
• Fif­teen per­cent reduc­tion in fuel costs and 6% in vehi­cle fleet costs by opti­mis­ing dimen­sion­ing of vehi­cles and equip­ment, dis­place­ment con­trol and cre­ation of support.
• Reduced con­tract cost by 6% for out­sourced secu­ri­ty ser­vices, clean­ing and tem­po­rary labour by rene­go­ti­at­ing the con­tracts, pay­ment audits and new sheet for con­trol and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of measurements.
• In the area of com­pli­ance with pre­ven­tive main­te­nance on electro­mechan­i­cal sys­tems, the client has achieved improve­ments in util­i­sa­tion, effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of teams man­age­ment. These result­ed in a 12% increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of teams, reach­ing 100% of Pre­ven­tive Main­te­nance Com­pli­ance for water sys­tem and 60% for sewage system.
• Com­mer­cial and phys­i­cal loss­es was reduced fol­low­ing bet­ter plan­ning, dimen­sion­ing and bal­anc­ing of com­mer­cial agents and vehicles.

  * We take client con­fi­den­tial­i­ty seri­ous­ly. While we have kept the brand anony­mous, the results are real.