Department Revitalization
Overview
Title: Operations Manager
Area of Specialization: Operations
Location: Ohio
Term: 6 Months
Background
A services company headquartered in Ohio is experiencing a boom in business and services but cannot keep up with the work. The company has established that the roadblock is in the estimations department. Historically when workers were no longer able to perform their daily job they were transitioned to estimations. Once in estimations each employee would focus on the area of business in which they specialized. This created an artificial silo within the department. Specific areas of the business were significantly ahead of schedule while other areas of the business were so far behind they risk losing major customers on a daily basis.
Project Plan
- Evaluate Estimations Department Staff
- Crosstrain Estimations Department Staff
- Standardize Lead Time Expectations on Estimates
- Standardize Job Estimates Based on Due Date
- Relocate Estimations Department to War Room Layout
- Daily Standup to Review High Priority Jobs
- Automated Department Scheduling Based on Job Queue
Length of Engagement
Originally this was an open ended engagement. After the initial evaluation phase the belief was that this department could be successfully turned around in approximately 12 months.
Outcome
This engagement completed significantly ahead of schedule, in approximately 6 months. We were able to successfully complete all identified tasks. In the end all customer relationships were saved by completing all estimates before their due date. The staff was ultimately happier with their working arrangements as they controlled when they worked. Efficiency efforts were aimed at the self imposed roadblocks. Prior to the engagement each employee was responsible for a specific type of job and/or specific customers. In turn some estimators spent many days with nothing to do while other estimators were weeks behind in their workload. We cross trained all estimators and eliminated the dependencies on each individual estimator. A move to a centrally managed job list, initially manually kept in Microsoft Teams and later programmatically managed via an internally hosted web site, gave a real time look at open jobs with expected completion dates. We moved to a centrally located estimators room with low wall cubicles for all estimators and drafters. This gave the ability to engage the group on difficult jobs. A junior employee was trained and ultimately took the long term Estimations Manager position.