Projects

 An infrastructure construction client within an ongoing alliance established to deliver major rail infrastructure projects in the state of Victoria, Australia 

As part of its statement of strategic intent to continue leading the alliance partnership into the next 5-year phase of major rail infrastructure project upgrades, the client decided to implement its critical strategic objectives by using the Hoshin (Policy) Deployment methodology. 

Policy Deployment is a strategy development and deployment methodology that translates the voice of the customer into new products and business operating systems to drive reliable profit growth. At its heart, it is an organisational learning method and a competitive resource development system.

A series of ongoing workshops involving the senior leadership team and key managers analysed the current business and external environments to identify 3 key critical strategic objectives to focus on over the following 12 months. Hypotheses were developed on what and how to achieve each objective together with a set of goals and measurable targets. 

Deployment teams were created to work with internal and external stakeholders to plan and execute the activities and tasks needed. Monthly reporting tracking strategic execution was created using visual management techniques. Given the complexity and effort required across all 3 objectives and being the first time the leadership team was exposed to this methodology, 2 of the 3 objectives activities and tasks were 50% completed within the first 12 months.

A freight logistics client with significant numbers of active mobile assets servicing over 400 customers and responsible for the movement of millions of tonnes of raw resources, retail goods, manufacturing products, and construction materials across Australia.

Increases in journey cycle times and challenges in increasing the number of services available to individual customers drove the need to better understand:

• The reliability and utilisation performance of its key mobile assets and 
• The reasons for delays in completing services more quickly.

The objective was to make additional services available to move more products to grow revenues and broaden its growth ambitions.

The client was assisted in discovering, adopting and implementing a time usage framework based on the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) methodology and adapted for its industry operating model. 

The framework was digitised using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and equipment to identify, measure, report and calculate major delays experienced in the field in real time. Delays were also tied to key events and proximity relationships to identify likely root causes for management action.

An innovative user interface was developed to give an intense and rich visual representation of delay data and information to users and management.

The framework was tested and deployed in a key market over a number of key assets. The data and information collected drove the instigation of several improvement projects aimed at reducing delays due to external network providers preferencing their asset's use of the network and review of maintenance and provisioning processes to identify opportunities to reduce associated time delays.