SUCCESS ENGINEERING
Mitigation action
Once you know the top SCRs to deal with, it is high time to introduce some mitigation actions to reduce the potential hazards of these SCRs. A mitigation action can be defined as an action which aims to reduce the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of a Supply Chain risk.
Lean tools
You might not have time, budget or intention to implement simultaneously all the Lean tools. And even if you have all three constraints, your SME is still plenty of opportunities to become more resilient. The following table organizes Lean tools according to the six categories defined in the previous step and categorizes them according to ‘the secret revealing’ cube. For each category, there are a big number of proposals which can be helpful to your case.
Best practices
Category SS
Build partnerships and alliances with members of the SC strategically, with the goal of reducing the total cost of providing goods and services.
Work with suppliers to proactively avoid conflict and anticipate and mitigate program risk.
Keep a close and trustful relationship with all the key suppliers which could potentially damage your supply chain if something goes wrong.
Work as partners imply a cooperative effort in obtaining performance improvements.
Procurement and supply chain organizations should not be treated as cost centres support services, but as potential profit centres.
Profit improvement per $1 sales increase or material decrease.
Category CS
Focus on customer needs and process considerations when designing a product. Enterprises can gain a tremendous competitive advantage through best-in-class practices that cut across industries
Use forecasts to plan and pull to execute. A system that reacts to pull signals will have less variation than a comparable system that adopts a push mode of operation.
Develop high-quality program requirements among customer stakeholders before bidding and execution process begins.
Pull tasks and outputs based on need, and reject others as waste.
Establish effective contracting vehicles in the program that support the program in achieving the planned benefits and create effective pull for value.
Deliver on time your products.
Category WF & PM
Maximize external variety while minimizing internal variety. Maintain inventories in an undifferentiated form as long as it is economically feasible to do so.
Time lost at al bottleneck resource results in a loss of productivity for the whole enterprise (entire SC). Time saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage.
Focus on bottleneck resources because they control the flow. Synchronize flow by first scheduling the bottleneck resources to support the bottleneck resources.
Do not focus on balancing capacities. Focus on synchronising the flow.
Map the management and engineering value streams and eliminate non-value added elements.
Use Lean Thinking to promote smooth flow.
Category E
Reduce variation in the system. Reduced variation allows the SC to generate higher throughput with lower inventory and lower operating expense.
Manage Technology Readiness Levels and protect program from Low-TRL delays and cost overruns.
Category TQ
Build a program culture based on respect for people.
Motivate by making the higher purpose of the program and program elements transparent.
Support an autonomous working style.
Expect and support people as they strive for professional excellence and promote their careers.
Promote the ability to rapidly learn and continuously improve.
Encourage personal networks and interactions.
Strive for perfect communication, coordination and collaboration across people and processes.
Believe, trust and help your employees.
Overcome reluctance to changes.
Ensure that all your employees have the right capabilities for their task.
Category DM
Buffer variation in demand with capacity, not inventory.
Focus on improving the performance of the Lean SC - but do not ignore the SC’s business ecosystem.
Formulate performance measures that allow the enterprise to better align functions and move from a functional to a process orientation.
Decisions should promote a growth strategy. While enterprises should attempt to simultaneously increase throughput, decrease inventory, and decrease operating
expenses, the focus must be on improving throughput.
Clarify, derive and prioritize requirements early, often and proactively.
Actively minimize the bureaucratic, regulatory and compliance burden on the program and sub-projects.
Plan leading indicators and metrics to manage the program.
Develop an Integrated Program Schedule at the level of detail for which you have dependable information.
Develop a Communication Plan.
Pursue collaborative and inclusive decision making that resolves the root causes of issues.
Plan in the long, but decide in the short term. Consider all the alternatives and take the minimum risks to get the biggest opportunity.
Establish effective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and make sure what your real situation is.
Applicable to all six categories
Improving the performance of every subsystem does not necessarily improve system performance. Improvements in subsystem performance must be gauged only through their impact on the whole system.
The role of operations strategy is to give the enterprise the ability to cope with changing customer preferences. Products and processes should be designed to promote strategic flexibility.
Pursue Lean for the long term.
Strive for excellence of program management and systems engineering.
Use lessons learned to make the next project better than the last.
Promote complementary continuous improvement methods to draw best energy and creativity from all stakeholders.
Consider risk as something that lets you gain value, but having a risk assessment plan which differentiates the ‘interesting risk’ from the ‘useless risk’.
Ensure quality at a reasonable price.
Work from the day one you sign up a contract.