An engineering & manufacturing company

Performance

A heavy engineering company making specialist parts for the international defence sector was growing. The nature of the business was that ‘lead-in’ times for orders were typically long. Once an initial order was made, customers often required repeat orders very quickly.

The manufacturing process was changing, whilst quality levels demanded by customers increased.

Wellbeing Works was commissioned to find a way to capitalise on the loyalty of long serving staff, integrate new managers and create a performance culture to meet the changes demanded by customers.

Approach

The initial starting point was to identify the 10 things that made the company unique and successful. Wellbeing Works then identified the extent to which these 10 unique points were directly related to the actions and behaviours of staff.

A review of the opportunities and challenges that the company faced was shared with all managers and supervisors. The purpose was to gain employee recognition that if the 10 unique features were to be sustained in light of the new challenges the engineering company face, then improving performance levels was an integral part of the plan going forward.

Discussion and debate in short focussed meetings with managers and supervisors was a key activity. From this it was agreed that there was a need for two processes.

Firstly, everyone needed to understand the key indicators of success for the next five years. These were distilled into broad statements such as to “protect and enhance the reputation of the company”. Each indicator was then backed with a RAPID statement/.*

This clarity was highly useful for some because it removed both ambiguity and employees thinking that “it’s someone else’s responsibility”.

The indicators and RAPID statements were discussed and agreed with each manager and then presented to the workforce for comment or amendment before they were implemented.

Managers were trained in how to review and provide feedback on performance.

Outcome

The company gained benefits within seven months of implementation. The clarity of indicators and RAPID statements had the following positive effects:

• reduced error rates in ordering
• sales plans were shared earlier
• changes were responded to more promptly
• manufacturing quality improvements were embraced

The company is now one of the most successful of its kind!

* (A RAPID statement describes for each individual their; Responsibilities, Accountabilities, Performance expectations for their role, to whom they need to Inform about what and their Decision making scope.)