Newton Heath Train Maintenance Depot maintains 40% of Northern Trains Ltd [NTL] fleet, this makes it the largest maintainer across all 4 Depots within Northern Rail Limited, with a maintenance establishment of up to 300 staff inclusive of contractors.
Key stakeholders from within the organisation included, Depot Manager, Depot Production Manager, Production Depot Managers, Plant and Maintenance Managers and Stores Manager.
Northern was in the process of establishing a new Maintenance Facility planned to come online Mid 2020. The client identified areas within the Depot that required support to improve performance, introducing new ways of working including the incorporation of the Engineering Operating Model that Project7 had been introduced at other Depot locations across NTL.
Project7 was selected as the Partner of choice to support the client through the Project Management of the Depots readiness for transferring into the new facility.
The key motive for this project stemmed from the lack of in-house improvement experience and capability within the company – a significant challenge that was preventing the client from delivering a full Lean programme, necessary to achieve the desired savings and cultural improvements targeted, across a large scale workforce.
For many years, client had trialled numerous options in an attempt the establishment a high performing Continuous Improvement [CI] culture – with limited success. One of the main causes was the lack of dedicated teams to support and drive CI improvement.
The organisation was left with a high number and variation of projects and improvement ideas but had little to no structure in place for the required changes to be successfully integrated into the business.
Partner of choice:
- Project7’s demonstrable experience, success and trusted methodology for creating an internal capability coupled with our direct hands-on coaching approach were the main contributing factors for selection and being chosen as Northern Trains partner of choice for this programme of work.
In order to overcome the challenges within Northern Rail, Project7 designed and supported the implemented an Operating Model.
Project7’s coaching and implementation of the Operating Model supported the development of leaders in Lean Leadership behaviours, whilst leading, coaching and guiding the client through the introduction of the new ways of working to create a high performance culture that would create the foundation for excellence on moving to the new facility.
- Delivered 5S Workplace Organisation training, to Northern staff, including train the trainer for ongoing training, to enable Depot to become self-sufficient in delivering Workplace Organisation training
- Implemented 5S Workplace Organisation within the Depot
- Developed pre & post shift routines, to ensure smooth start-up of production
- Created T Card system to support process confirmation, working with teams to understand core daily tasks
- Delivered Level 1 problem solving training to support root cause identification
- Level 2 Practical Problem Solving training, and coaching stakeholders through the process
- Process mapping workshops on a number of processes, to understand what actually happens and identify improvement area’s through gap analysis
- Visual Performance Management, set up a tiered system that supports the 3 levels within the Depot to drive performance
- Project management ensuring Depot Mobilisation and readiness for new shed