The KCOE System for Operational Excellence
The KCOE System: Engaging People, Process, and Improvement
KCOE’s Operational Excellence system is a journey that leads an organization from a current state, through cultural change, to world-class performance. The journey is a three phase system: engaging people, engaging process, and engaging improvement..
The KCOE System can be utilized in bringing system-wide improvements to your organization or it can be adapted to meet your specific needs where improvement is needed the most.
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Phase One: Engage People
The first phase of the KCOE Operational Excellence System is Engaging People: The Cultural Change Phase. This first phase of the OE journey involves both leadership and front line staff. Top level organizational leaders (CEO and team) form a steering committee for the implementation of OE. A supporting Continuous Improvement Process Team teaches, coaches and trains the front line. Leadership sets metrics and targets for each of the world-class priorities (safety, quality, productivity, human development and cost). These targets stimulate greater awareness around high-level problems. Leaders and front line team members use simple five-why problem solving to communicate and practice continuous improvement. Employees begin to see that problems are blessings and that surviving means removing the root causes of problems. Leaders focus on teaching and coaching. Each leader improves his or her teaching and coaching skills in Phase One.
Phase One Includes:
- Steering Committee Coaching and Formation
- Continuous Improvement Program Implementation
- Foundations of Continuous Improvement
- Communications Planning
- Annual Improvement Planning and Balanced Scorecard
- Safety and Workplace Organization Programs
- Problem Solving and Solution Systems
Phase Two: Engage Process
Each phase builds on the previous and prepares for the next phase. They are in order for a reason. Unfortunately, lean and six sigma consultants, industrial engineers, and other improvement specialists start with Phase Two tools. This is a fatal error. The OE System saves traditional process improvement tools for Phase Two. Phase Two builds on the culture work done in Phase One and plants in that fertile soil the seeds of process improvement. In Phase Two, organizations implement tools to improve the process, build in quality, reduce cost, and tap into human creativity to better serve all the customers. A second function of Phase Two is to move members of the organization from individual focus to a focus on the needs of the team.
Phase Two Includes:
- Infrastructure and Organizational Strategies
- Traditional Lean Tools – Standardization, Flow, Pull, Kanban, Andon, TPM
- Improvement Event Tools – Facilitation, Group Problem Solving, Effective Listening
- A Focus on Customers and Supplier Quality and Improvement
Phase Three: Engage Improvement
The third phase is engaging improvement, the daily living phase. This phase will once again challenge the entire organization to orient to even larger cross functional problems. Improvement activity in this phase requires the highest levels of process improvement, problem solving and human involvement. In this phase, the whole organization will be required to participate in two QC circles (akin to extended kaizen activities / events) per year. Obviously, as the phases unfold, more and more of each person’s time is dedicated to continuous improvement. In order for this to happen, the organization must be restructured into teams that represent the cross functionality that the customer experiences: value streams. Some of this early restructuring would take place in the second phase and would be completed in this third phase.
Phase Three Includes:
- Cross-functional Quality Control Circles
- Leadership and Management Development
- Collaboration with Customers and Suppliers to Reduce Cost
- Long Range Strategic Planning
