Whether you are a for-profit company or a mission-driven organization, you are continually challenged to achieve more with less. WIN's Operational Excellence Practice provides training and facilitation services employing best practices in systems thinking, quality assurance, process improvement and leadership development to help your organization develop self-sustaining continual improvement programs. We are well versed in Lean Thinking, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and Agile approaches, but our intent is to be short on consulting jargon and long on results. We do this by introducing the appropriate tools and methods to design programs tailored to meet your organization’s established strategic and operational objectives. We specialize in applying world-class concepts to achieve operational and financial performance in complex and non-routine environments such as project oriented and engineer-to-order products and services.
Auditing & Assessment Services
Barriers to Growth Assessment – An audit highlighting the primary barriers to profitable growth for your business, including a prioritized list of specific technical, financial, cultural or market constraints impacting your business and recommended solutions for overcoming them.
World-Class Operations Assessment – We facilitate your team to benchmark and assess itself on 5 overall dimensions, and 17 best practices of world-class operations and develop specific ideas for both immediate and long term improvements. A great tool to jump-start both learning and planning towards a path of continuous improvement within your organization.
Information Technology Strategic Audit – This service is offered jointly with our I/t team and builds on the barriers to growth approach. An IT audit identifies how technology can be leverage to address your primary barriers to growth.
Energy and Facilities Audit – We offer an energy and facilities audit that identifies opportunities within existing processes and already planned capital improvements to conserve energy and reap government and utility incentives as a result.
Workforce Skills and Training Assessment – Working with our Workforce Innovations group, we have developed a set of tools to identify the skills and competencies your workforce need to get the job done, and develop a plan for improving them.
Facilitated Planning Services
Using our operations expertise and facilitation skills, and your team’s specific knowledge and ideas, we support YOU in developing the plans to take your organization to the next level. We have a variety of tools and methods to facilitate the planning and execution process for improvement efforts in the following areas.
Establishing an Operations Vision This training and facilitation program educates leaders and key decision makers on how to establish a core vision that sets direction for your team’s improvement efforts within their own operation. Key components include formalizing and gaining consensus on the vision and implementing improvement through a set of key system-wide performance measures and a vigorous multi-faceted communication plan.
Value Stream Mapping & Process Analysis This service facilitates a cross-functional team to analyze and map a specific process and identify opportunities for improvement. Team members are introduced to high performance process design principles before analyzing the process. The service is equally effective for production, administrative and engineering or project-oriented processes. WIN can also employ process simulation tools when appropriate for more robust process design.
Launching a Cross Training Program in the Workplace This service helps companies realize the immense benefits of skill diversity in the workplace. The program outlines how to implement a cross training program including developing a skills inventory, training templates and checklists and a master cross training schedule. The service is typically first piloted in a specific functional area.
Process/Part Flow Analysis a systematic method of analyzing past routing data to identify common patterns of flow and natural process groupings or "families". This type of analysis is particularly effective at identifying opportunities to promote flow and implement cross-functional, team oriented work cells in environments with extreme product/process variety such as a job-shop or healthcare facility. The prime benefits are improved ability to implement a flow-oriented process, physical layout and scheduling system.
Most common process families based on routing data including task sequence and volume
Most common paths of flow among resources (work centers) by frequency, volume and revenue dollars or labor hours
Economic analysis projecting revenues and costs associated with potential work cells
Facilitated Workplace Design and Layout Planning This service is to facilitate a team of senior managers to apply a structured methodology to generate a detailed shop floor layout for industrial facilities. Coupled with a Process Flow Analysis a team can generate an optimal layout by also identifying:
Inventory existing resources (equipment, tooling, fixtures, storage devices, material handling equipment, etc.,)
Key physical constraints of the facility (e.g. size constraints, infrastructure limitations, etc.,)
Major Space Planning Units (SPU) including functional departments, cross-functional work-cells, large work-centers, storage and staging areas and specialty areas.
Patterns of flow and other key relationships among SPUs both from past data and new process opportunities
Depending on the scope of services the team will be able to generate a macro-layout plan identifying the locations of major SPUs as well as an inventory of key equipment for each, micro-layout plans for individual SPUs and detailed work-center designs based on 5S principles. WIN can also employ process simulation tools when appropriate for more robust layout design.
Transformational Initiatives This service is for companies interested in designing, initiating and executing a comprehensive continual improvement program that impacts the operational and financial performance as well as employee morale and provides the basis for profitable growth. The goal of Transformation Services is to provide education, facilitation and program design support while transferring the knowledge and ownership of sustaining efforts to key organizational decision makers. Though each company’s implementation is unique, the core elements of any initiative are rooted in world-class performance practices and include:
A comprehensive improvement plan resulting from a structured planning process to identify and prioritize improvement efforts
A comprehensive system of key performance measures
A communication and feedback plan
Training and employee development plan
Team-based improvement / problem-solving project structure
Continual improvement planning and execution system
Training & Development Modules
World-Class Industrial Network offers training modules that can be executed as part of a consulting project or as a stand alone service. Our content has been delivered on site at dozens of companies to thousands of individuals, and through open enrollment courses with partnering agencies across the country. Our typical approach is to deliver training in a “Learn-Do” method, helping your team put the concepts to practice in their real work environment right away. Customized consulting services for implementation and hands on learning are available for any of the training topics listed below. For more information including course descriptions contact John Werling, Partner and Director of the OE practice.
Mini Modules (2-3 hours)
Introduction to Lean, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints
Framework for World Class Performance
Introduction to ERP for SMEs
Lean & Green – incorporating Sustainability into your Lean Efforts
Half Day Training Modules
Process Improvement through Process Mapping
Implementing Cellular Manufacturing
5-S System for Workplace Organization
Set-up Reduction
Full Day Training Modules
Lean Manufacturing for Job and Project Shops
Lean Engineering
Scheduling & Capacity Management for Profitability
Estimating, Job Costing & Economic Decision Making for Profitability
Team Based Problem Solving
Leadership for Change
For more information on any of our consulting or training services,
contact John Werling, Partner and our Director of the OE practice.