TXM Deliver Costs Savings and Reduced Lead Times for Tracerco Ltd

Client Tracerco Ltd

Location Billingham, UK

TXM Deliver Costs Savings and Reduced Lead Times for Tracerco

Background

Part of Johnson Matthey PLC, Tracerco is a world-leading industrial technology company with over 60 years’ experience. They provide companies all over the world with the insights they need to make informed decisions about their operations. Using innovative technology, they measure the unmeasurable, access the inaccessible and help solve the impossible.

The Challenge

Tracerco’s products and services are highly customised to provide data driven insights to its customers in the oil and gas industry to help them make informed decisions about their operations. This requires the processing of a large amount of detailed and critical information from quoting to delivery and installation. It is key to Tracerco’s success that customer specifications are met throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Tracerco Project Engineer, Christina Curnow, highlighted “As the business has grown, the sheer complexity and the way the information is handled had the potential to significantly impact on the lead time. Quantifying the true Value-Added Time and Cost of Goods Sold for each product family was a real challenge for Tracerco. Despite using a common set of business tools (ERP/Databases/CRM), the teams were working in different ways which lead to duplication of effort and added to the overall lead time of a project”.

Being a global organisation, it was key to standardise systems and review how critical data was being stored, maintained, and communicated. Tracerco set the challenge for TXM to help them develop a streamlined business process whilst reducing costs. With ambitious growth targets for 2022 and beyond, it was vital to get the streamlined processes in place to ensure the company was in a strong position to deliver on its goals.

 

 

The Solution

Work started during lockdown at the end of 2020, with process mapping and coaching conducted remotely using virtual whiteboards. Senior Consultants Lee Candy and Tim Scurlock, facilitated a cross-functional team at Tracerco to develop an improved design and workflow using the TXM Manufacturing Agility Process®. The process was as follows:

• Current State development
• Identification/measurement of metrics & validation of current state
• Identification of issues, problems/concerns
• Mapping of issues on Pay Off Matrix
• Clustering of Similar Issues
• Development of prioritised issues to solve
• Creation of Future State processes
• Development of A3 action plans
• Validation/strengthening of A3 action plans

Each step in the process was given a % Complete and % Accurate score as well as a Lead Time which was used as the main metric to challenge the way the work was carried out. The underlying causes of the incomplete and inaccurate data as well as the reasons behind long lead times versus cycle time were mapped into the Current State.

Working with TXM, the Tracerco team then set themselves bold targets to eliminate the waste and design new, streamlined workflows, which would reduce the lead time and quality of the information flow. Once the Future State Maps had been finalised, the TXM consultants coached the teams in creating A3 improvement plans which consolidated the key individual and team actions into a single document ready for implementation.

The Results

Over the course of 2021 and into 2022, the Tracerco team implemented the streamlined workflows with the following impressive results:

• £264K savings identified from lead time savings in one product area alone.
• The Future State Map was used to clearly define the requirements for the new CRM which saved money, time and eliminated process steps which may have been included unnecessarily.
• Customer and Product critical data is now being successfully maintained in a central Global SharePoint with roles and responsibilities clarified to eliminate duplication of effort, increase security, and reduce the risk of error.
• Several team members were enrolled onto the ISO 18404 Lean Practitioner Accreditation Course run by TXM as part of the Tracerco CI program.

“Not only has the project delivered cost savings and a reduction in project lead time but going through the mapping process with TXM meant that we could capture the input from everyone across the globe in the remote sessions. This meant that they all had a say in the new processes which has created a real sense of engagement and buy-in to the new systems” Tracerco Project Engineer, Christina Curnow.

TXM Lean Solutions are a global operational excellence consultancy with offices across the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, North America & China. Need help streamlining your business? Contact a TXM Consultant today! In the UK, contact a Lean consultant in the UK today.