EON Blog

We at EON have been fortunate to work with a number of premier companies across a variety of industries. Two industries where we’ve done considerable work are chemicals/petro-chemicals and heavy process, which has allowed us to learn quite a bit about what it takes to make continuous improvement relevant and sustainable in environments that tend to be highly asset intensive. As one consultant I know once put it, it’s important to understand how CI works at a facility that is mostly pipes, vats and tanks. So, here are 3 tips for applying CI to the process industries.

In a previous blog post titled Production Systems 101, I described three key characteristics that could effectively serve as a “litmus test” as to whether your organization has truly implemented a production system vs. having one in name only.

The term “operational excellence” has become commonplace today.  Indeed, most organizations that we interact with have made, or plan to make, a commitment of some kind toward achieving operational excellence.  But just because so many companies are on the operational excellence journey doesn’t mean they are necessarily heading for the same destination.  In fact, it seems that the there is some variability across organizations in their interpretation of operational excellence.

A common challenge for many organizations is to develop an operational excellence deployment model that is sufficiently compelling to overcome the natural inertia (or outright resistance) that resides at the plant sites.  Many of us are familiar with the standard justifications for that inertia, including:

Standard work involves organizing all tasks in the best-known method and sequence, using the best combination of people, material, and resources to deliver consistent, timely, and repeatable results. This is one of the foundations of Lean, helping to deliver the predictable and consistent output upon which reliable processes and satisfied customers depend. 

It seems that an ever-present concern among Operational and CI Leaders is that the hard work taking place in the organization to implement a continuous improvement model will ultimately go to waste due to a lack of sustainability.  I’ve worked with numerous organizations over the years that were in the midst of deploying a CI model for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or <insert number here> time hoping that this time the effort really sticks.  So what does it take to “get over the hump” so that the organization isn’t forced to undertake a CI relaunch down the road?

In our experience there are 4 fundamental requirements that need to be met to ensure the sustainability of your CI program across time:

The good news is that your organization has recognized the need to implement a structured approach to continuous improvement (CI) or otherwise increase your investment in CI, but now you’re struggling with the question of how to do it well. Although adding yet another set of tasks to your personal workload, not to mention that of the broader organization, may seem daunting, when done right, a good CI model can streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and boost your bottom line.

Our team recently participated in the OpEx Week Business Transformation Summit held in Orlando, Florida.  The event provided a great opportunity to connect with OpEx Leaders and Practitioners around the issues and topics that they care about most. 

Early data says “not really,” and that’s a problem.

My father, now retired, put food on the table for most of my childhood by running a small carpet cleaning and disaster restoration company.  As a child when on summer break from school I would go with Dad every day to his office to “hang out” while he arranged the daily work schedule, assigned jobs to the crews, inventoried supplies, paid bills, and performed all of his other standard work in order for the business to function.