SECTION 3 EXPLORATION AND SELECTION OF THE PROBLEM

EXPLORATION AND SELECTION OF THE

PROBLEM

ANALYSIS OF CURRENT ORGANIZATIONAL SITUATION – POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

Industrias AUGE is a company with an outstanding infrastructure and a potential to become an important global player within the Energy, Wind Power, and Oil & Gas industries. AUGE employees are aware and preoccupied of the industry requirements in terms of safety, quality and pricing and they are determined to meet and exceed their clients’ expectations.

However, during my time in AUGE I have observed that the company is facing a lot of issues related to productivity, teamwork and flow of communication. Here below I have summarized the most important problems to be solved:

1.

Although AUGE is currently in API certification processing, Global Sales Team is not 100% compliant with its requirements. GST does not have all its processes registered as standard processes. It needs to comply with the international standards to satisfy their customers’ needs, and especially to support its business expansion. Some processes are obsolete or have a lack of organization and maintenance; the team is not completely aware of those standard processes.

2.

Two teams focus on client relationship/service: one provides to global accounts and the other to national accounts.

Even though the goal is the same, the internal processes and best practices to accomplish each team’s goals are different. Team managers don’t communicate and share their strategies, which slows down AUGE efficiency and can lead to extra workload. In fact, there is a huge gap between the workflow and communication between the teams and the rest of AUGE.

3.

Best practices are not shared within AUGE so new procedures are not capitalized. It does not distribute enough information between each department. Each department has its own management and goals, so it progresses at its own pace without notifying the rest of the organization. For instance, Quality Management System was not aware of GST activities. Solving this problem is essential in order to improve AUGE’s global competency.

4.

There is a lack of ownership and leadership between all the departments. This has an effect on the efficiency in the factory. Employees just do their own work without helping or being interested in that of others. Quite rightly, GAM mentioned: “We don’t need leadership at the top, we need leadership everywhere”. All departments should be involved every time the situation requires it.

5.

To finish, there is a lack of commitment within AUGE, for instance, in the delivery of products. Sometimes, they do not respect the customer’s requirements regarding the purchase order, due to a lack of proactive approach by the different departments.

SELECTION OF THE PROBLEM

process standardization and market research.

“Growing better before growing bigger” was the first thing the GSTL and the GAM told me. In fact, it seems more logical to establish the right methods to increase customer approvals before looking for new customers without knowing how to.

CRITERION OF SELECTION

Process standardization is the most imperative and urgent project for GST. In fact, AUGE needs to increase its sales and especially strengthen its sales’ department. So this project is essential for AUGE’s expansion. Indeed, before expanding AUGE’s reach, we found it much more important to standardize all its best practices. Therefore, it could be a first step to set up process standardization in the entire AUGE organization.

The most important in a production company is to: 1. Lead development

2. Close the sale 3. Deliver on time

4. Nurture customer retention

So, AUGE must make available and relevant structured procedures, easy to understand and useful.

PROJECT’S BACKGROUND

AUGE revenues since 2009. They began to design and develop procedures but they didn’t really need to standardize these procedures due to the small headcount of the team.

But since 2009, the team has significantly increased in size so it needs to standardize best practices to be more efficient and to teach new employees how to use its procedures. Also, they need to comply with API requirements and AUGE Quality Management System. AUGE noted that there was a discrepancy between Professional Norms and existing processes. I have observed that GST is facing a lot of issues related to its processes:

‐ Its processes are not 100% compliant with API requirements ‐ There is a lack of organization in GST processes

‐ There is a lack of awareness within GST regarding standard processes ‐ They use some obsolete processes

OBJECTIVE

The goal of the process standardization is to create foundations for best practices that ensure predictability and repeatability of AUGE’s activities.

In other words, the objective is to build up procedures and processes that help standardize the operation internally. That is to say: control, minimize mistakes, and make it easier to use all AUGE’s processes.

POTENTIAL UTILITY FOR THE COMPANY

Process standardization will develop stability for day-to-day operations for business support. Sensitive information will be centralized, which will facilitate its reception, its

archiving and for employees usage. So, all standard processes will be very effective. Also, the employees will be able to easily find information and make faster decisions. We conclude that process standardization will play a key role in knowledge utility.

Besides, it will permit AUGE to eliminate the “Tribal knowledge”: to abolish and get rid of all unwritten rules or information known by certain persons within AUGE but not known by others. Tribal knowledge can be necessary for the production of a product or performance of a service, but may also be counterintuitive to the process.

Moreover, process standardization is the principal line for AUGE’s international logistics.

PROBLEM

How standardization of process and best practices can support the international growth of a fastener company?

WORK PLAN

DEFINITION

Audit, develop and improve GST standard processes to ensure conformance with AUGE’s Quality Management System, and ISO & API requirements:

1. Review and improve GST processes 2. Create a flow diagram for each process

3. Define and improve Local Work Instructions (LWI) 4. Create a Value Stream Map for all GST processes

TIME LENGTH OF EACH DIFFERENT STAGE

PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROJECT

Global Sales Team, Quality Management System, Engineering and Production

NECESSARY RESOURCES