As was stated earlier, the overall approach to the UOR program actually evolved over time. The project initially began with a focus on the Unity Electronics supply chain, from the customer to manufacturing planning and control on the shop floor to the delivery of finished goods to the customer through warehouse distribution. After a few months of working on the project, it was determined that a greater amount of leverage and subsequent benefit could be achieved through the synergy of several projects, so the entire Case A Page 146 Friday, August 11, 2000 10:53 PM
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project was broadened to cover all of operations and placed under one program management structure. This new scope covered everything from order administration and supplier interface to manufacturing management and customer interface.
The overall program was split into several individual projects, which were all interconnected via a common purpose through specifically identified objectives. The projects were segregated by major business process to provide focus for the individual teams and their assigned objectives. Each project had an identified leader with assigned team members. The projects were time phased so that the team members who were assigned to initial projects could be reassigned to later projects. By assigning resources in this manner, Unity was able to achieve cross-functional knowledge transfer through exposure across project teams.
The individual projects included:
1. Process layout: Aspects dealing with the physical flow, cell design, and final layout for each of the cells (12) and business units (4).
2. Material planning and control: Focus on the design and development of the logistics process for planning and controlling the flow of mate- rial through the factory and warehouse system to the customer through Kanban pull.
3. Organization design: Organization redesign and training programs that included the cell team, cell leaders, business unit managers, and support operations through a structured process of assessment and selection.
4. Facilities (the new plant): Construction of a brand-new manufactur- ing facility.
5. Tactical procurement: Deployment of shared EDI with suppliers through EDI/e-commerce, and reduction of the current supply base by 40%.
6. Total acquisition cost: Generation of a global supply strategy and supplier development and selection process.
Each project had its own subset of objectives and assigned deliverables, and each team had to report progress to plan for their project every week. Inte- gration between the project team leaders in regard to what they were design- ing for the new processes was essential; therefore, communication between teams was a constant activity.
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Even though each project was managed independently, they all had to follow the same methodology for design, development, and implementation. This methodology had seven distinctly independent steps:
1. Baseline would establish a baseline of current performance for the existing processes. This was accomplished by mapping each of the critical operational processes and gathering key performance data on each of those processes.
2. Desired state would establish the desired state for the business. The team did this by reviewing the operations diagnostic that was con- ducted in December of 1997. They also performed a self-assessment on key business processes to determine where Unity Electronics was performing compared to what was considered best practice. They made site visits to other companies who were noted for operating with lean practices. The expected outcome of this step was for the project team to recognize what was possible and to learn from the techniques of others.
3. Gap analysis would recognize the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be. An analysis was performed to understand the gap and identify actions to close it.
4. Concept design would provide a high-level concept view of the desired state for Unity Electronics, or a future state vision for what the project team collectively agreed they wanted success to look like. It included deliverables such as block layouts, determining the num- ber of cells, what products are made in the cells, number of business units, etc.
5. Detailed design would provide a detailed view of the future state. It described all those elements that make the future state a reality and included deliverables such as cell equipment requirements, equip- ment loads, Kanban sizes, staffing needs, operating rules, material planning and control process at the cell level, cell team member roles and responsibilities, etc.
6. Implementation plan would develop an implementation plan and include the time frame, identified deliverables, assigned ownership, transition strategy, and sequence of events to make the future state a reality.
7. Execution actually would deploy the implementation plan. Case A Page 148 Friday, August 11, 2000 10:53 PM
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As each individual project’s team analyzed and designed their improve- ments, they were required to receive approval at each step before moving on to subsequent steps. This ensured control of the program. It kept the steering committee engaged in the project and made sure that they bought into the design solutions before going too far with an unapproved design. It also enhanced integration between the projects because the steering committee was made up of cross-functional managers covering all aspects of the busi- ness. Therefore, they were the objective third-party view that looked at the solutions from an outside perspective.
When it came time for implementation, the process owners (those who had to live with the new process after the project was over) were in the driver’s seat for deployment. The design team was to still remain assigned to the project until the process owner agreed the new process worked and was doing what it was designed to do.
The one overriding strategy was to prove out the mechanics of the new process in the old facility. When the new operational process for the first business unit was stable, then it would relocate to the new facility, thereby minimizing risk and avoiding a double move of equipment.
Execution of the implementation plan had a few key aspects worth noting: 1. The responsibility for execution was handed over to the individuals who had ownership for the new process after implementation, thereby requiring buy-in to the new design before deployment. This reduced the burden of having to “sell” the new design to those on the shop floor.
2. A pilot cell approach was used, by which the implementation initially concentrated on one manufacturing cell, gathered all the lessons learned from that cell, and then carried those onto the next manu- facturing cell. This minimized risk to the project and allowed the project teams to collectively concentrate their energies on one pilot cell during the learning stages of implementation.
3. Business units were deployed one by one in accordance with the manufacturing cells they supported. This allowed: (1) the organiza- tion changes to take place based around a specific product family, and (2) ownership for all the operational processes that affected that family to be quickly adopted. This in turn accelerated the arrival of benefits at the bottom line for that given product family.
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