This post is a very personal summary of the lessons learned from implementations during my 20 years as an employee and these 8 as an entrepreneur.
As an employee in charge of the operational and planning areas, I hated the consultants who arrived as redeemers to organizations, making promises of magical solutions. That is why, from the beginning, I included people on the team who came from operations, suffering my pains and having held planning positions themselves. It is important as a consultant to enter organizations with total respect for what has been done; we must enter as help and support to those who struggle daily with their own variability.
What should a consulting team do? Ask, ask a lot, understand the client’s model, and find which components of their planning model can be improved. We must understand that not all solutions apply to all environments, not all models fit in all companies, and not all companies have the same priorities. There is no magic bullet that solves all problems. The only common thing that should exist is common sense and the scientific process in finding the core problem and the possible models that help solve it.
It is not about implementing software. Those who believe that simply installing software solves all the problems have not understood that organizations move around processes, people, customs, the knowledge base that exists in the organization, measurements, and internal powers. Implementing software without challenging or modifying these elements is like setting up a tool that will be consumed by entropy and corporate antibodies.
Reviewing the most successful implementations, we find that they all meet the following requirements:
– Strong involvement of management, understanding the objectives and effects of the change
– A clear vision throughout the organization that what is implemented is a new operating model and not a technological tool
– Education, a lot of education towards the new concepts and principles
– An operating model co-constructed with those who operate the current model, understanding from both parties (consultant and company) that some practices must be changed and that not everything that has worked in other parts applies to the company
– Understand that the success of the project does not only lie in going live but in achieving the proposed results (improving the level of service, inventory turnover, and visibility of the supply chain)
– Monitor the results of the new model (ideally include the results in management or S&OP committees)
– Have continuous improvement cycles such as PDCA, analyzing the result of the operation and continuously updating the model
If you want to know more, write to me and we’ll have a coffee! – Juan Camilo Trujillo
