Managing industrial growth
Spirit Advisors specialises in operational excellence in industrial environments. We can help you manage a phase of strong growth.
Controlling growth
Many industries (Aerospace, Energy, Pharma, etc.) are currently benefiting from buoyant winds. Others are in niches that may be overheating as a result of the crisis and/or the reorientation of industrial investment.
You’re growing fast, even out of control, and you’re finding it hard to control. The market is taking off again and you are faced with a sudden increase in the demand for your products with new products some which are so new that have not yet stabilised.
Rapid expansion brings with it a host of operational, organisational and cultural challenges. You have to keep up with the new pace of business, while managing your costs and prevent destabilisation of your staff. Operational excellence provides methods and a culture of continuous improvement that enable you to stay in control.
Successfully face a rapid growth
Building a tactical debottlenecking plan
The first step is to obtain a clear view of capacity by workstation, and then, on this basis, to work with your teams to draw up an action plan to achieve the desired production volume. Critical workstations (“bottlenecks”) are systematically observed in the field to identify hidden potential.
Mobilising on critical points
We combine field observations, analyses of data and indicators, and the experience of operators to identify and prioritise blocking points. We then work with cross-functional teams to implement solutions. Generally, this involves getting production and maintenance to work together, and getting management heavily involved in these issues.
Empowering and supporting production operators
The ideal is to move towards “autonomous production cells”: clear production objectives for each team, good visual management of performance and physical flows, optimum workstation layout, etc. Collaboration with operators is the key to success: “the one who does is the one who knows”.
Supporting field management
We help management on the ground to redefine and put in place effective day-to-day management routines, enabling deviations to be identified and dealt with as early as possible, root causes to be analysed, clear objectives and feedback to be given to operators, and the hierarchy to be alerted when necessary. This is the keystone of the system !
Enlisting production support teams
Problems identified in the field must be a priority for support functions, to prevent the efforts of operational staff from running out of steam. We support the implementation and use of visual management systems on a daily or weekly basis, ensuring that the right decisions are taken, that everyone is properly aligned with the real priorities and that results are monitored.
Major benefits of managing growth
Adaptation
Your plant or production workshop can be rapidly adapted to sustainably handle increased production rates
Growth
Your sales increase without affecting your profitability, delivery delays are eliminated
Accountability
A collective approach to continuous improvement, leading to genuine empowerment and responsibility on the part of production operators and managers
An operational team armed
for the future
Our client is a key player in connectivity in France. It designs, deploys and operates digital infrastructures such as fibre cables, relay antennas and video protection networks.
The Group has experienced very strong growth due to the need for modern digital infrastructure. As a result, a number of challenges have emerged which create instability and reduce profitability such as: controlling lead times, back logs and expenditure, improving data quality and managing productivity.
Spirit Advisor’s distinctive point : Addressing both operational and human challenges simultaneously. Support in the field, based on co-construction and a culture of continuous improvement, has enabled managers to move from firefighting mode to pro-active, autonomous management, and has enabled project managers to work on common, shared operating methods.
