A change of Pace

Refreshing an existing change process such as Continuous Improvement is not an easy task, however Pace Microtechnology have achieved just that. This case study identifies some of the key steps that helped achieve successful outcomes as well as learning that can help those considering the launch of a change process such as Continuous Improvement in the future.

Introduction

Being at the forefront of technology carries a price - the rate of change is massive and Pace Micro Technology has had more than its fair share. Based in Shipley, near Bradford, with operations in France and the USA, Pace started out as a small company designing and producing dial-up modems. With the boom in the internet and cable/satellite TV, Pace experienced massive growth and became a market leader in ‘set-top box’ technology - a position it now holds with some pride.

Things haven't always been like this though. In 2002, Pace’s fortunes took a significant downturn as their customers reforecast the demand for their products. Suddenly a healthy profit turned into a huge projected loss.

Large-scale redundancies soon followed creating a negative feeling in a company that had, up until that point, a family feel about it.

Kaizen-training was asked to help Pace transform itself through refreshing its change programme - Continuous Improvement (CI). Previously Pace had launched the programme with extensive training being given to over 80 team leaders and facilitators. However, the impetus had faded away and all that remained were a few tired projects and a lot of cynical voices.

Planning the First Steps

A survey of trained facilitators was carried out to find out what was holding the programme back. Three messages were heard loud and clear.. ”Management just isn’t committed to it”, “It’s seen as a waste of people’s time” and “The way we do it isn’t user friendly”. So what interventions could be carried out to shift these attitudes?

A small team of people from HR, Marketing and Quality were put together, and with the help of Trevor Durnford from Kaizen Training, developed a route map of how CI could be refreshed. The Vision for CI developed by the team was to have a vibrant CI process in place, making a massive difference with 100% of employees participating actively - a real challenge given the context at the time. The route-map developed by the team included the following milestones:

• Refreshing the approach to CI including simplifying the problem solving toolkit
• Engaging the Executive team and determining their Vision for the business and the role of CI in its achievement
• Selecting the themes for top down focus
• Communication cascade from the Exec team
• Selection and development of facilitators
• Overhaul of intranet support for CI activities

The planned journey changed as Pace took its first steps, but all of these milestones proved critical.

Combining the strengths of Marketing and HR as well as the Quality professionals also meant that people capability and communications were included in the planning process – a key lesson for those implementing more technically oriented change processes such as Six Sigma.

Refreshing the Approach

Simply using the term ‘refresh’ instead of revamp, renew or re-invent was very powerful. The people at Pace are proud of their origins and therefore using language that suggested we were embarking on the next chapter rather than a different book was important.

The first step towards refreshing the approach was to simplify the problem solving process. Pace had originally decided on the Ford 8D approach to improvement. This method is a particularly systematic approach to problem solving but it does have its drawbacks with some feeling that it was a little cumbersome. With help from Kaizen, a small group of people developed the Pace framework:

P = Problem
A = Analyze
C = Change and
E = Embed

Whilst this structure is fundamentally in tune with the principles of D-M-A-I-C and the PDCA loop – it is owned and therefore used with pride inside the organisation.

Engaging the Executive Team

If there was one thing that proved pivotal, it was spending a full day with the Executive team, engaging them on their Vision for the business and challenging them on their leadership of CI. Kaizen facilitated the day with the support and commitment of John Dyson, the CEO and Maggie Pedder, the HR director. The outcomes of the workshop were critical:

• A compelling Vision of the future
• Clarity on CI’s role in engaging the workforce
• An agreement to develop leadership capabilities for the top 50 managers
• Agreement on cascading the Vision and CI message and a commitment to ‘walk the talk’

Selecting the Themes for Top Down Focus

One of the strengths of the existing Pace approach was the focus on bottom up improvement. Literally anyone could identify an improvement opportunity and launch a team to tackle it. Refreshing CI meant listening to one of the key comments mentioned earlier.. “It’s seen as a waste of time” or put another way, the areas that are tackled don’t seem to be critical to the business.

What was needed was a way of ensuring views from employees, customers and the company’s management were brought together so that improvement projects could be completely aligned with achieving the Vision for Pace. Following the 1-day workshop the Executive designed what they called the ‘Actionable Strategies’. These were a cluster of key focus areas, the idea being that if ideas for CI projects were put forward that were aligned to the Actionable Strategies then the CI team would be aligning its efforts directly towards the Vision.

Fig 1. A key element in refreshing CI was to enhance the customer and leadership drivers of change

1. Focus on the way we work

• Empower people and instill a culture of real listening
• Recognise achievements and celebrate success
• Plan for success but acknowledge and learn from mistakes
• Break down internal and external barriers to challenge the norm and enable creative thinking
• Agree and fulfill our commitments to our colleagues and customers

2. Focus on markets and Customers

• Actively drive new business
• Retain and grow business with existing customers
• Listen to our customers and respond to their needs
• Know our competitors’ strengths and how to beat them
• Develop cost-effective quality supplier base
• Deliver lowest cost of manufacture
• Meet and exceed customer expectations on quality and delivery

3. Focus on products and technologies

• Prioritise reliability and quality in product development
• Develop leading edge products that excite our markets and customers
• Benchmark our products against those of our competitors
• Innovate for lowest cost of ownership

Each of the exec owned at least one of the above. When a CI idea was put forward that was aligned with their strategy they automatically became that team’s champion.

Communicating the Vision and CI

The executive team came to realize that inspiring the organisation with the Vision and becoming role models for the future required leadership skills development. It was decided that Kaizen Training would develop the top 50 managers in Pace towards becoming transformational leaders able to inspire, encourage, challenge and empower and to behave in such a way that modeled the way. Kaizen designed a programme called ‘Leaders with Pace’ based on the five practices of Transformational Leadership created by Kouzes & Posner.

Each of the participants carried out their own 360 feedback on how they fared against the model and this was then used in a series of 3-day workshops run for leaders in the UK and USA.

The impact was significant and immediate - with many people noticing a real difference in those who had taken part in the programme. A key element of the development was to help leaders inspire other around a shared Vision. The tips and techniques for engaging people proved invaluable as the cascade of the Vision and CI unfolded.

Marketing the progress and benefits of the CI process was helped enormously by involving the Marketing team as key drivers in CI along with HR and IT support. After a year of CI activity a ‘CI Success’ exhibition was held demonstrating how many people were involved in the process, what issues were being tackled and what the benefits were to Pace. Support from people throughout the business was essential, from John Dyson, the CEO to engineers, secretaries and managers alike.

Selecting and Developing Facilitators

Facilitators already existed in Pace. However their skills focused primarily on the tools and techniques of problem solving and the Ford 8D model. The business had changed significantly since the rollout of CI the first time round.

Attitudes were more negative, skepticism was abundant and there was a lack of trust. To complement the commitment from leaders, facilitators also required a new skill set. Some of the skills they developed included how to:

• Change the emotional state of a group
• Develop the skills of team leaders
• Unblock groups that have become ‘stuck’
• Use ‘cutting edge’ techniques such as the solutions focus and affinity diagramming as well as the more traditional Ishikawa, brainstorming and measurement techniques
• Deal with difficulties in groups such as conflict
• Raise the level of commitment to action within a team

Some of the CI teams were able to operate successfully without facilitation, however these skills really helped in raising the performance of those teams that did request a facilitator. What’s more, the understanding of the value that the facilitator can add has spread through Pace. The raised awareness has raised the interest level in joining the team of facilitators able to support more change teams in the future.

Overhauling the Intranet Support

One of the advantages of having a CI coordinator who headed up IT was that the whole process could be supported by the latest intranet technology. Everyone in the organisation has access to the company intranet and so designing and implementing a user friendly CI intranet happened very early on. The features that this provided were:

• The logging of ideas or problems for CI teams to tackle
• Logging the progress that CI teams were making
• Tracking the benefits that were being delivered
• Inviting team members, facilitators and leaders onto teams

Essentially, anyone in the business could determine how the programme was unfolding and so as ONE of the methods of communication it proved invaluable.

The Results 9 Months On…

The ‘CI Success’ exhibition was organized as a celebration of the both the efforts of those who had participated and the results that had been achieved.

Over a 9-month period, 238 ideas had been registered on the CI intranet that were either in action or waiting for teams to commence work.

Of these, 39 teams had completed their work and were able to demonstrate a combined financial benefit of £1.1m. The target of £2.5m at year -end was looking like a realistic outcome.

A further target of involving 100% of the organisation was well on track too, with 71% having participated after the first 9 months.

Here’s an example of some of the work carried out by teams:

• Increased demand for product demanded much faster throughput rates. One team identified improvements that delivered potential savings of £44K
• Secretaries were constantly being asked the same questions about conference room availability and resources. They formed a team providing automatic search and booking facilities – saving them many hours of non-value added activity.
• Another team identified that water usage at the Saltaire site was greater than the national average for similar industries. Their solutions not only helped Pace towards its stated
• CI team set about developing the Pace Ethics policy. Not only does this help satisfy the requirements of external shareholder interest groups and assist with corporate compliance, the team ensured that Pace did not have to rely on external consultants to do the work!
• Much of Pace’s activity involves the developing and testing of software. One team identified that testing was very manpower heavy and needed to be done much more quickly. Their solution involved automated testing that ran overnight. This reduced testing time from 1 to 2 days, carried out by one person, to 2 to 3 hours using automation. The financial benefits haven’t been determined yet, but they are bound to be significant.
• One team based in the USA removed a bottleneck in information flows to developers and test engineers giving an estimated saving of £48K
• One of the biggest financial successes of the first 9 months was a team that focused its attention of the procurement of printed circuit boards (PCB’s). Their investigations and
  creative alternatives provided a whopping $1.75m benefit to the company.

These are just some examples of the tremendous efforts of people in Pace in helping the business towards its Vision of becoming the ‘Best Set-Top Box Supplier in the World’. With positive leadership, powerful facilitation and a desire to make it happen, Pace has demonstrated that even when an organisation is wrestling with a downturn in fortunes and massive change, CI can play a huge part.

Key Learning

There are powerful messages that can be taken from this study to help organisations thinking of implementing continuous improvement processes or refreshing those that exist:

• Get the support of HR and Marketing to help in the people and communication aspects of change
• Don’t be afraid to develop a problem solving process that is a departure from the textbook
• Communicate the links between the change process and the organisation's Vision
• Ensure a balance between top-down, bottom-up and customer-driven improvements
• Remember to develop facilitators and black belts in becoming experts in dealing with group dynamics and attitudinal issues as well as problem solving processes
• Develop leadership capability to inspire the organisation had give more energy to your change process