Hertel - Targeting the Business Critical Issues

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Hertel – Targeting the Business Critical Issues

Hertel is a leading international, multi-disciplinary, industrial services company. It supports its customers with access solutions, insulation, corrosion protection, mechanical, offshore and specialist services. Their customers are in the Oil and Gas, Process, Energy and Offshore industries. Hertel had started a relatively small scale conventional Lean Six Sigma programme. Although they had delivered some projects they were not seen as business critical.

The challenge

The company had a Black Belt and some Green Belts in the UK but their projects had been confined to finance where there was some sponsorship. However, unless the Lean Six Sigma team started delivering real benefits in ‘main stream activities’, where sponsorship was weak, the future of the programme was in doubt. The goal was to identify some high impact projects that would demonstrate the relevance to the business.

The solution

Using the Process Insight Strategy to Action Process, we worked with the leadership to:

identify the major gaps / threats to delivering their strategy
identify the ‘Big Ys’ – the 3 – 5 critical few ‘initiatives’ needed to close that gap over the next 1 – 2 years.
select one of these on which to focus the Lean Six Sigma resource.

The selected Big Y was to turn around a ‘problem’ contract which was coming up for renewal in 1 year. It was with a strategic customer and covered access services on a high hazard chemical complex. A business director then sponsored a 2 day VSM project selection workshop with a cross section of site personnel. A good shared understanding of the current state was gained. The ‘pain points’ that drove inefficiency were identified and a prioritised list of scoped out projects was generated.

The results

The client was delighted to now have a credible improvement plan. It incorporated quick hits, Just do it, Green Belt and Black Belt projects. The plan was owned by the leadership and had sufficient buy in at all levels for successful implementation.