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London North Western Route [LNW] is the largest of the Network Rail routes within the UK, running services from Euston and Marylebone, through the midlands, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, up to Carlisle.

The Route employs a workforce of over 7000 staff across all the main disciplines of Maintenance and Asset Management, as well as Renewals and Infrastructure projects. With over 4500 miles of track, LNW represents 24% of the entire Network Rail organisation.

Key stakeholders from within the organisation included the LNW Route Executive Team and Route Managing Director, as well as a host of senior managers throughout the enterprise.

The project was part of the overriding Network Rail strategy to introduce a Better Every Day culture through structured Continuous Improvement. An initial figure of £300m in efficiency savings was introduced. LNW’s strategy was to be best in class for its Network Rail operations division.

When we first looked at our efficiency target and our goals regarding lean, we first thought we wanted the course to simply wipe its face; so what are the costs going to be for Year 1 and Year 2, could we realise those costs and bring them out our bottom line – we quickly hit those targets within about 9 months of starting our course! Since then we’ve moved on and actually found savings month on month, and have exceeded all previous targets. It does exactly what it says on the tin.”

– Jamie Cowan – Special Projects Manager at Network Rail

The key motive for this project stemmed from the lack of in-house tools and skills 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, across a large scale workforce.

For many years, Network Rail had trialled numerous options to attempt the establishment of a Continuous Improvement [CI] culture – with limited success. One of the key root causes for this was the lack of understanding of CI culture at an Executive level, in order to be able to not only sponsor, but to understand the key strategy, in turn gaining a sustained momentum of CI.

The organisation was left with a high variation of projects and improvement ideas that had little to no structure in place for required changes to be successfully integrated. Analysis of Alternatives:

• Initial discussions led to the development of a strategy and basis for a full tender process.
• The LNW Executive selected six tenders for full review and representations.
• Project7’s four-step approach and direct hands-on coaching methods were the main contributing factors for selection and winning the contract award.

In order to overcome the challenges within LNW, Project7 designed and implemented a solution, centered on their four-step Knowledge Transfer approach; which would improve awareness and provide coached training across all 408 of LNW’s key personnel. This initiated a roll out of “Lean” activities across each of the Route’s disciplines and departments.

Project7’s solution did not only provide some the UK’s leading experts, but facilitated a robust selection of early adopters to Lean from within LNW. A full program of learning through doing, in real time, with 100% full time coaching and mentoring support to the chosen delegates, ensuring the most effective knowledge transfer possible.

Implementation was split into 3 primary focus areas:

Part 1

The creation of 35 5-day Lean Learning Academies, scheduled over two years, to support the overall Knowledge Transfer programme, and provide a base-level understanding for the top 408 LNW Managers selected.

Part 2

The selection process via the Project7 four-step approach, ensuring that the delegate in question was well-informed and prepared for the learning and activities going forward.

Part 3

The Lean Learning Academy [LLA] itself with the selection and ongoing support for the delegate to work in real-time, within the business, incorporating a “Lean” workstream to support and develop the learning, as well as demonstrating to others within their teams the behaviours and techniques used to enforce both significant and sustained change.

As a result of these implementations, the initial savings target was met within the first 9 months of engagement. This target has seen month on month growth ever since.

Initial concerns with the proposed solution included incorrect selection of delegates due to understanding not being fully integrated amongst Executives. The Project7 Step 1 process quickly identified this issue and through further robust reporting was able to gain better control of up and coming candidates.

Gaining support from the Finance community was also an initial concern with the project; LNW had formerly been unable to model or understand the impacts of Continuous Improvement and waste removal, in terms of hard savings and cost avoidance. Attendance of Finance personnel on the LLA itself support the understanding and the key role which the Finance department fulfil. Further reporting systems were developed and financial trackers and calculation models were created to verify the savings to date.

Early adoption of both Finance and HR are critical in securing support for change and identifying how initial verified savings encourage further change and support sponsorship.

• To date 260 managers completed the LLA, with over 210 Lean work streams in place.
• Strengthened LNW reputation with leading customers.
• ROI of £10.4 million to date, with a further £37 million identified for the next 18 months.
• Best reliability figures in over seven years, with Virgin Trains performance at its highest to date.

Our client, Airbus, is the largest aeronautics and space organisation in Europe. As a global leader in manufacturing aircraft, the company is home to the most modern and comprehensive aircraft family in the world.

As part of a funding initiative facilitated by AIDT Workforce Development, funded by the Alabama State; Airbus US Final Assembly Line [FAL] approached Project7 [P7] with a major change programme concerning their workforce performance culture. Having previously worked with P7 on a successful project in Canada; a trusted relationship had already been established with the client.

The recently appointed General Manager, of a brand new Final Assembly Line facility in Alabama, was confronted with several issues. The facility was facing the challenging transition from a facility build phase, constructing two aircrafts per month to test capacity, to a fully operating Final Assembly Line producing four aircrafts per month – whilst losing the temporary expat expertise provided from Europe, and without significantly increasing employee numbers.

This change programme was essential, in order to maintain the Airbus Strategy to;

• Increase US market sector growth
• Meet committed increase in production volumes

The key challenges for Airbus, Alabama included;

Transition from experienced European Airbus employees to new, inexperienced US employees

• Airbus Operating System; the manufacturing maturity assessment level of deployment was
  assessed at scoring D with a target condition of A.
• A recent Employee Engagement Survey revealed 60% of base-level employees rated Leadership
  as either Average or Poor.
• 40-50% of the planned workload was being moved [travelled work] to the next workstation for
  completion; instead of being completed at one workstation.

Our Client desperately needed to address Leadership issues, relating to both employee and material management within the workstation. Currently, the facility was working in ad-hoc ways to achieve final assembly of aircraft build; neglecting the formalised systematic approach – vital in organising materials, tooling, processes and people.

Although Senior Management were aware of the systematic methodologies, they were not being utilised or deployed – impacting all levels of the workforce. This left front line, value-adding employees without the necessary knowledge and awareness; which would be key in establishing a high-performance culture.

A reduction in out of station travelled work was also crucial, in order to cut costs and gain improved performance levels.

In order to overcome these key challenges, P7 were assigned with designing, implementing and evaluating a world class operating system through 4 levels of the Airbus, Alabama organisation.

This Solution would enable the effective delivery of aircraft; meeting quality, schedule, cost and safety – every time, in turn creating a high-performing culture.

P7’s Solution consisted of the seven steps of the P7 Way:

1. Strategy into Action
2. Tiered Visual Performance Management [VPM]
3. Short Interval Control & Performance Dialogues
4. Performance Confirmation & Go Look See
5. Setting Clear & Aligned Targets; Problem-solving Level 1
6. Coaching for Success; Problem-solving Level 2
7. Talent Management and Leadership Development

Having carefully adapted these seven steps to the Airbus Operating System; the P7 Way was closely aligned with Airbus’ core principals in mind. This naturally fuelled the success of the implementations; providing the necessary focus to meet and go beyond the required standards. In order to unravel the complex structure of the diverse and highly technical organisation, P7 incorporated two additional tools/techniques into the working environment, including the RACI Diagram and ICOR Chart. This facilitated a significant breakthrough in the project’s success and enabled improvements in the identification of employee roles, tasks and timescales; further supporting the project’s implementations.

Despite the success of the project’s implementations, P7 recognised an over-estimation in the local knowledge of the new workforce in the Airbus Operating System standards. With hindsight, slowing down the pace of the implementations, extending the length of the project or employing extra team members may have helped further boost improvements.

As a result of the coaching and implementations deployed by P7; Airbus US FAL have achieved:

4 levels of tiered Visual Performance Management [VPM] fully integrated into Airbus daily
governance processes creating a World Class Operating System.

• 40% reduction in Travelled Work from station to station – enabling the first ever clean aircraft build within workstation.
• An increase from D to B in the Airbus Operating System Maturity Assessment [Six categories move to B and two to A].
• A positive swing in the Employee Leadership survey results on Leadership; moving from 60% below average rating, to 60% above average rating.
• $2.4 billion in annual sales by moving from two aircraft delivered per month to four aircraft delivered per month.

BVT Surface Fleet, the result of the merger of BAE Marine Systems and Vosper Thorneycroft, specialise in naval shipbuilding and combat systems integration – as part of a joint venture company.

It was noted that the organisation may have a number of synergies within the organisation structure that could prove to be inefficient or uneconomical. For this reason, the BVT organisation engaged the services of Project7 [P7] in order to streamline their processes and remove inefficiency.

Key stakeholders from within the organisation included the Group Operations Director, Operations Director, Group HR Director and site HR Directors, as well as a host of other senior managers across the three sites.

Following the merger, BVT had little experience of, or in-house resources for, conducting an organisation design programme.

Key objectives required of a reorganisation included:

• Supporting the aim to become a single unified business
• Fostering innovation through a diverse team, with a balance of business systems managers from different sites, backgrounds, etc.
• Considering the use of unconventional structures to enable agility, such as task forces, dual responsibilities, broad roles, etc.
• Being agile, flexible and able to transform further to meet the businesses needs as they evolve
• Delivering an organisation that supports business contiguity, enables integration and delivers savings

In order to plan the project, the following key stakeholders were identified:

• P7 – to design, manage and facilitate the project.
• Support functions [HR, Finance, SHE, Strategy, Commercial] – to provide services to delivery areas such as Operations. These functions are responsible for: developing processes in line with the strategic intent of the business; ensuring sound governance, especially regarding resource planning and deployment; and synergy savings across all of their own activities.

There were a few options available to them team:

Option 1 – Do nothing; continue to operate as they were, which would likely result in a higher resource level than required and with poor performance from personnel who not only fail to add value, but hinder other team members.

Option 2 – A arbitrary % cut in headcount. While many organisations do opt for this when they believe their organisation has grown to a level which may not be effective or economic, it creates a risk of losing effective and essential employees.

Option 3 – Create an Organisational Design & Appointment Process within the Economic and Effective [E&E] Framework. Change – whether it be technical, political, economic, legal or organisational – requires a systematic approach and a degree of rigour applied to it.

The recommended solution was to create an Organisational Design & Appointment Process with the E&E Framework.

P7 were engaged to conduct an Organisational Design and Appointments [OD&A] Project in order to define an economic and effective [E&E] business for BVT Surface Fleet, within its three sites at Portsmouth, Scotstoun and Govan.

The project began by analysing the existing situation of the organisation. The current organisation charts, job descriptions, operational processes, operational interfaces and personnel performance were studied and captured. Following this stage of the process, the design phase was initiated to provide a pragmatic solution that would transform the business into an economic and effective
organisation.

The OD&A project utilised an E&E process based upon lean thinking design principles around industry best practices, in order to deliver the objectives outlined below. These principles were created to facilitate the development of an organisation that would best enable the achievement of the business’ strategic aims.

The process was split into three defined phases:

Phase 1: Defining the design principles to support the business concept and aims [60 days].

This included:

• Demonstrating a reduced management overhead in support of the overall synergy savings target
• Establishing delegation of authority to enable agility and empower managers to deliver rapid decision-making
• Understanding the geographical constraints and acknowledging that the business may be split over multiple sites
• Considering the practicalities of managing people and the associated travel time and cost
• Driving efficiency through optimum spans of control, avoiding 1:1 or 1:2 reporting lines in favour of 1:6-8 reporting lines for management and 1:12-15 for operatives

Phase 2: Mapping the existing [As Is] structures and designing the proposed [To Be] structures [60 days].

Phase 3: Implementation of the proposed design [90 – 120 days]

As a result of project support from P7, the Client experienced a split impact for Operations in the North [Scotstoun & Govan] and the South [Portsmouth].

Operations in the North:

• As Is: Nine levels, with a span of up to 1:22 and a total headcount of 1023
• To Be: Five levels, with a span of 1:6-8 and 1:12-15 and a total headcount of 903
  • A reduction of 120, equalling total savings of £3.9m

Operations in the South:

• As Is: Ten levels, with a span of up to 1:25 and a total headcount of 2963
• To Be: Five levels, with spans of 1:6-8 and 1:12-15 and a total headcount of 2716
  • A reduction of 247, equalling total savings of £10.8m

The To Be implementation was phased in over a 24-month period to mitigate risk through the transition period.

Integrated work team managers were upskilled to enable them to become more agile and remove the need for area managers. The creation of a more agile workforce enabled the organisation to become more competitive within the market in order to meet its strategic objectives.