NEWSLETTER Arête

Vol 15 January 2019

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Case 1: Capabilities Building Program for Design Engineers

Knowledge Nugget: RACI Matrix

News 1: Workshop on Problem Solving Tools & Methodologies

Chairman's desk

Lean Tip: Poka Yoke

Case 2: Optimizing OPEX of Meter Read, Bill Print & Bill Delivery Process

"Alchemist" of the Month: Ajay Thakur

News 2: VSM Workshop for Heavy Engineering Company

Arête Vol 15.0

Dear reader, we are delighted to

bring you yet another edition of

Arête. We have endeavoured to

make each edition of Arête as fresh

and content rich as possible. This

time around we have added new

case studies and knowledge

nuggets, which we’re sure you will

find intriguing and enlightening.

Please feel free to share your

thoughts and views by writing to us at

knowledge@ssa-solutions.com.

Happy reading!

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Pragmatic Leader of the Month: Mr. Malinga Arasakularatne 8

Upcoming Events 10

Chairman's desk

Dear reader, welcome to a new edition of Arete. Once again we are back with brand new case studies

and knowledge nuggets. We feature two new case studies on very diverse industries: one talks about

how we helped a machine manufacturer build the design capabilities of their design engineers and the

other about how we implemented OPEX in a power company based in Oman. In the knowledge nugget

section you will learn more about RACI metrics, and from our Lean tip section you will learn about Poka

Yoke. Through the news pages we share the the success of our two new assignments. After receiving a

very positive feedback on our new edition “Pragmatic Leader of the Month” I am glad to introduce

another great leader this month, this time from Sri Lanka. Lastly, we are excited to announce our

upcoming conference on “Profit Leadership” which we are holding in association with (NMA) Noida

Management Association on 9th February, 2019 in Noida.

Wish you a happy reading and, as always, I welcome your feedback!

Situation: A leading packing machine manufacturer in India took up an initiative aimed at strengthening the Design and NPD capabilities of Design Engineers in partnership with SSA Techknowlogies.

Actions taken: The uniqueness of the program was that unlike the conventional courses, the designers would learn from each other’s experience, either in the form of theory – the distillation of experience – or directly through cases. SSA trained 20 participants across 5 Business Units and provided guidance on selected live projects where the designers’ team was facing challenges/problems to meet customer’s expectation in terms of modification of product design.

Results: Design Engineers got to learn how to think systemically while designing products, how to define reliability of the product with the help of statistical approach, how to do risk assessment during product-process design, etc. Some of the additional benefits were that the participants learnt about the use of substitute materials in product design.

Case Study 1: Capabilities Building Program for Design Engineers

Situation – deep dive

ABC Ltd. Is one of the leading packaging machine manufacturer that has

been actively involved in various organization development initiatives.

Design and NPD function is often referred to as the knowledge centre of

the business. Domain knowledge and subject matter expertise has been

the key driver for sustenance of the function. The teams had been

traditionally working on a knowledge index which has been fairly robust for

fulfilling the present business contingencies. But in order to meet the future

business requirements of innovation and leadership, scaling up on the

knowledge index of the team becomes imperative.

The capability building initiative was developed with this very intention in

mind. SSA Techknowlogies is an exclusive partner of ABC Ltd for

conducting this program.

Actions Taken – deep dive

Some key elements of the program are as below:

1. Friendly Consulting: Participants bring back their challenges in each subject area. In smaller groups, the participants discuss the challenge, using the concepts learnt and work out a solution

2. Reflections: Participants reflect on how their learnings are applicable in their work context and what are their unique challenges and takeaways

3. Insight Books: The participants maintain a log of their learnings with noting on what ideas they can implement in their work. This becomes their course ware - almost like the participants creating their own textbook based on their experiences.

4. Impact Teams: Each participant chooses a team of 4-5 Associates preferably from their own Direct report who will be their ‘impact teams’. The participant shares his/her learning with the Impact teams in a formalized manner. The Impact team also helps the participant in doing the projects/assignments. This ensures cascade of learning to a larger population.

Results – deep dive

As a part of the program, SSA Techknowlogies has been conducting the following courses for the Design Engineers:

1. FTR – First Time Right Delivery

2. DFMA – Design for Manufacture and Assembly

3. DFMEA – Design Failure Mode Effective Analysis

4. Plastic Engineering

5. Welding Engineering

6. CAE/FAE – Structural Analysis

7. Industrial Design

Knowledge Nugget: RACI Matrix

A responsibility assignment matrix, also known as RACI matrix, describes the participation by various roles in completing tasks or deliverables for a project or business process. Definitions of the RACI Categories • Responsible: person who performs an activity or does the work. • Accountable: person who is ultimately accountable and has Yes/No/Veto. • Consulted: person that needs to feedback and contribute to the activity. • Informed: person that needs to know of the decision or action.

A RACI chart is a useful tool in project management. It is a simple, yet effective tool of documenting the roles & responsibilities of resources. Overloading of any resource can be quickly identified and it also enables newcomers quickly identify their roles & responsibilities.

Glimpse of Lean Training Workshops in GCC

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Case Study 2: Optimizing OPEX of Meter Read, Bill Print & Bill Delivery Process

Actions taken: Post process mapping and gap analysis team designed process to proactively tap zero consumption accounts by the data management team and aligned IT systems to accommodate this change. The change also impacted defect not passing on to the other sub processes like bill printing and bill delivery creating efficiencies at every level of the process.

Results: The initiative helped subsidiary save 27K omr/ Annually. Also changed enabled organization to enhance customer experience for 6K customers by shifting their meters reads from estimation model to actual mere read model.

Situation: A leading utilities company in Middle East, providing electricity has analyzed the meter reads process as part of organization wide lean initiative and realized opportunities to eliminate zero consumption meter reads to optimize service OPEX.

Situation – deep dive

A leading utility service provider, providing electricity to commercial and household segment in Middle-east has realized that a significant customer service OPEX is currently being spend on reading, printing & collecting the monthly meter. Post analysing the data team has discovered that In the year of 2017 Unit has spend 23,943.23 OMR for 5509 accounts (3.2% of total reads accounts) with 0 consumption in full year. Till Oct 2018 the spend was around 27297.15 OMR for 6977 accounts (4.1% of total reads accounts) with 0 consumption. Team realize an opportunity to optimize process to cut the expenses Incurred on such cases. Team realized this hidden opportunity as part of their lean project. This project focused on:

Eliminating wastes within the process and find opportunities to optimize service OPEX.

Enhancing customer satisfaction by creating window for customers demanding actual meter reads.

Eliminating re-work within the process for processing customer bills.

Actions Taken – deep dive

• The Diagnose Phase (D1): Team has done the meter read process mapping and did a comprehensive gap analysis. One of the quick win team realized post the exercise is to eliminate meter read process for zero consumption accounts.

• The Design Phase (D2): The change requires a proactive reconciliation of Zero consumption accounts proactively by the data management team and exclusion them from rolling to the external agencies who do meter reads.

• The Deployment Phase (D3): Data management configured the change and entire process stream was aligned wrt the new change. New process was designed eliminating meter reads for zero consumption. IT system were configured to detect such accounts and send exclude them further from bill printing and delivery process.

Process designed with proactive identification of Zero consumption

accounts by Data team

Billing team while reviewing pre-invoice excludes 0 consumption

Exception report is shared with service provider every month for

performance management

Results

Re-engineered process has lead savings of 27K omr/ Annually.

The initiative helped organization to enhance customer experience of additional 6k customer by shifting them from estimated meter reads to active meter reads. This will go a long way to improve perception wrt to billing accuracy.

Also team benchmarked the similar process and opportunity within the group and realized a larger opportunity existing.

Poka-Yoke

Poka-Yoke means ‘Mistake –Proofing’ or in a more literal sense – avoiding(yokeru) unintentional

errors (poka). Poka Yokes ensure that the right conditions exist before a process step is executed,

and thus preventing defects from occurring in the first place. Where this is not possible, Poka Yokes

perform a detective function, eliminating defects in the process as early as possible. Its purpose is to

eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they

occur.

Without Poka-Yoke

Slot matching the shape to prevent incorrect orientation With

Poka-Yoke

Constantly looking for creative ways to minimize mistakes pushes people to rethink the process and invites innovation

Lean Tip: Poka-Yoke

News 1: Workshop on Problem Solving Tools and Methodologies Industry: Automobile – 2 Wheeler, 3 Wheeler and Commercial Vehicles Segment

Location: Maharashtra

Duration: November-2018 to January-2019

SSA Techknowlogies recently concluded the 4-day training program on ‘Problem Solving Tools and Methodologies’ for a leading player in the automotive industry. The program was held in two phases spread over the months of November and January.

The participant pool comprised of senior team members from the QA, QC, Engineering and the Business Excellence departments.

The first phase of the program provided the participants an introduction to various problem solving tools and techniques. It also involved training participants on how to identify and prioritise the problems areas before applying these tools.

After recognizing the problem areas, the participants were trained on tools to measure the baseline of the current process and analyse the root cause of the problem areas. After the root causes of the problems were identified, various solution generating tools and techniques were discussed with the participants. The program concluded with discussing the tools that can be used to monitor the improvements.

News 2: VSM Workshop for Heavy Engineering Company

SSA recently conducted a VMS workshop a leading heavy engineering company based in India.

Key Objective of conducting the workshop: • To understand current performance level on various Business / Process KPI's • To perform a detailed diagnosis of bottleneck processes

Outcome of the workshop: • Baselining and Target setting for defined KPI • Identification of improvement projects across entire value stream • Create a "Project Repository" to achieve the business goals • Cycle time study with VA/ NVA analysis • Capacity calculation • Critical welding process capability

To know more about our specialized solutions please visit

www.ssa-solutions.com

Pragmatic Leader of the Month: Mr. Malinga Arasakularatne

Mr. Malinga Arasakularatne is the Managing Director of Hemas Leisure &

Hotels group in Sri Lanka who is our next 'Pragmatic Leader'. His vision to bring

'Service Excellence' culture in the hospitality industry which is the need of the

hour of all such industries in Sri Lanka, which supports countries tourism

revenue. Foreseeing the changing customer expectations he felt that

meeting stated requirement of the customer is not enough but we need to

delight them. In this endeavor he felt 'Lean Thinking' would be an ideal

transformation engine and took up a well thought out intervention engaging

SSA as partner. His clarity, engaging style of taking people along and keeping

an eye on the result is outstanding. We wish him a very successful business

outcome from his efforts.

“Alchemist” of the Month: Ajay Thakur

Ajay is part of SSA’s Knowledge Management Department and provides back end

support to the operations team in the South Asia and GCC region. He is responsible for

constantly updating SSA’s knowledge base to suit the changing requirements of our

customers. He is also very competent in doing the data analysis and his work enables

the operation team to take better decisions.

He has an exuberant personality and his energy is contagious. He worked on some

very important assignments and received great appreciation from the entire

management team for this leadership. Ajay is always ready to pitch in to support

anyone who needs help and believes in going out of the way to ensure that the task

at hand is done with complete conviction . SSA is proud to have such youngsters

onboard who are always ready to do whatever it takes to make the company the first

choice of its customers

Key Takeaways: • Build a new roadmap for ‘Profit Vision 2020’ • Key to deliver Boardroom goals, both 'scientifically & effectively‘ • Make it measurable & Make it last

Profit Leadership Conference in association with Noida Management Association (NMA) 9st February, 2019, 5:30 to 7:30pm IST Venue: Noida Management Association - Noida

Keynote Speaker: Mr. Abhidnya Mahatekar COO, SSA Group of Companies

“Upcoming Events

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