With today’s dynamic and turbulent global economy, sustaining competitiveness and growth are critical for ensuring business continuity and company longevity. It is essential that companies continually improve their processes focusing on eliminating waste or non-value-added activities to achieve long-term growth. Striving for operational excellence is an organisation wide endeavour that enhances a Company’s value to all its stakeholders, by its multi-dimensional as well as multi-layered impact encompassing speed, cost, quality, health and safety.
Many companies are adopting Operational Excellence implementation plans and programs like ISO 9001 or Lean Manufacturing have become quite routine. We expect these programmes to be foundational elements on which new age methods such as i4.0 together with robust health, safety and environmental practices get integrated, thereby positively impacting the triple-bottom line(profit, social and environmental) that companies seek to deliver to their stakeholders.
Operational excellence, therefore, goes way beyond just lowering costs or increasing productivity at work. For an organization to adopt any approach to maintain operational excellence there is a basic need to deploy and inculcate a Process Oriented Culture by creating:
- a culture of Learn to SEE, Learn to ASK, Learn to STOP
- systems for simplification, visualisation and standardization
- solutions that recognise issues, correct them quickly, and prevents them from recurring in future
- practices that safeguard health and safety of the workforce and workplace
At its core, Operational Excellence in Manufacturing is essentially about FLOW. Each employee, for his / her specific area, should be able to visualise the flow of product or information and should recognize whether that flow is normal or abnormal and should be able to stop the process to try and fix issues before continuing. The intention is that employees focus on maintaining flow while management focuses on growing the business. Operational excellence cannot be achieved without applying the right combination of techniques, tools and real-time dashboards.
We at ProminentMind partner with clients across all stages of a business, work directly with them, at every level to guide, coach and mentor them to internalise the spirit and concepts of underlying Operational Excellence, while simultaneously learning to apply the relevant tools, techniques, as well as processes to raise operational excellence to global standards.
Some of the areas where we offer solutions, as part of our package are:
- Quality management -systems, processes, mindset/culture, audits
- HSE practices and improvement
- Process Management – Process visualisation & improvement
- Lean Manufacturing – maximising productivity while simultaneously minimising waste within a manufacturing operation
- Provide consultancy to help clients start their Industry 4.0 journey.
We guide and support to implement systems in the whole value stream like:
- Early Warning Systems
- Layer Process Confirmation
- Human Error Prevention
- Q basics
- Problem solving (8D, progressive search to identify the dominant causes)
- Quality Assurance Matrix
- Safety basics
- Shop Floor Management cycle – OEE improvement
Centre of expertise in Process Management and Lean manufacturing methods
- Creation of Process landscape and Turtle diagram. Defining KPI and KPR, diagnosing process deviations, Corrective actions planning, KPI, KPR review mechanism.
- Identifying and eliminating waste, Improving Quality, reducing production costs and time
- Design of Product and process layout to maximise efficiency and minimise cost of production. To make production line flexible, minimise flow, creating safe workplace
Centre of Quality Expertise
- Methods of improving of maturity for quality management systems (QMS)
- Implementation/Training of Quality tools (PFMEA, 8D)
- Cost of Poor-Quality calculation
- Organizing a system of traceability for products
Centre of HSE expertise
- Developing “Environment, Occupational Health & Safety Management System” (EHSMS) and methods for improving overall EHS maturity
- Developing initiatives towards “Sustainable Development” of the enterprise. This includes, “Carbon neutrality, Water & Energy conservation, Zero waste to landfill and Zero accident”
- Compliance evaluation of applicable Environmental, Occupational Health and Safety (EHS) legal requirements
- Competency building on EHSMS auditing, EHS legal & other requirements, Environmental aspect/impact study, Risk assessment, Incident reporting & investigation (PSS, 8D),
- Guidance for implementation of operational issues, (e.g., Machine safety release, Chemical management system, Contractor management, Emergency preparedness and response etc.,)
- Carrying out EHS process and management system audits
- Organizing EHS campaigns (e.g., Road safety, Fire service day, National safety day, World environment day, World water day, Energy conservation day etc.,) to reinforce EHS culture among employees
- Guidance in ESG reporting
Centre of expertise in Special Processes and Metal forming Processes
- Heat Treatment (Atmosphere and Vacuum processes), Surface Treatment, wear resistant coating, Precision components cleaning process, Thermal Energy Machining
- Introducing new technologies (ex. C coating) and processes as per requirement of various generations of precision products.
- Implementation and training of new processes in precision manufacturing
- Support in metal forming processes – Stamping (conventional and fine blanking), cold heading and cold extrusions & Warm pressings
- Monitoring of tooling history and tooling life based on standards and expected life based on product/ materials used such as low carbon to high carbon steel( spring steel)
- Classification of machine tools and regular self and periodic maintenance