Business Excellence has over the last few years been invited to support some Luxembourg based financial institutions on the implementation of "Lean" to reduce their level of risk, increase the quality of their activity and achieve improved on time completion of customer related activities and settlements.

Analysis of the % value added to total lead time of financial value streams show improvement opportunities of similar magnitude to industrial value streams. Typically in an end to end financial process less than 20% of the start to end "lead time" of the process involves value being added to the transaction; so the potential is to accelerate these processes by up to 500%, achieving capacity increases and on time "delivery" exists. Business Excellence has developed a "Lean Financial Services" approach to engage organisations in "Lean Financial Services" implementation. Our experience is that Financial Services become even more enthusiastic about opportunities to cut waste out, fix underlying quality issues and realign resources to achieve at least 50% reductions in lead time and associated improvements in on time settlement.

1. Respect for people
2. Continuous improvement

Business Excellence has introduced lean type cellular manufacturing at a renown Luxembourgish precision toolmaker. 

The pilot project, kicked off in September 2015 has been conducted on a shoestring budget to demonstrate the potential gains from lean in a high value added precision business.

The pilot cell was designed by a team of the customer's employees trained and coached by Business Excellence, who has also accompanied the team in the deployment.

Initial results are a reduction of typical repair times from 15 calendar days to just 3 to 5 working days.

Laminar flow in the manufacturing cell is represented by FIFO sequencers on the machines. Given the shoestring budget the sequencer was made from wire and paperclips, but included colour coded tickets to make on time and late highly visible to enable any late work to be caught up to deliver on time. (See picture).

PROBLEM: A manufacturer of complex electro-mechanical systems had grown rapidly to the point where the demand for their products outstripped their ability to manufacture on time to target cost.

SOLUTION:  Business Excellence provided training in French on “Design for Manufacture and Assembly” to a multidisciplinary team of Product and Process Engineers and then facilitated a series of workshops to improve the design of a new product range to enable the same or better functional performance to be achieved with a drastic reduction in component cost and assembly times.

RESULTS: The client was able to deliver a massive order quantity of their latest design of product on time below target cost as a result of the application of the DFMA methodology taught by Business Excellence and the initial coaching and final in-house adoption of design for Manufacture and Assembly methodology.

DFMA is one of a several Engineering tools used by Business Excellence to enable organisations to improve profitability of engineered products.

PROBLEM: Loss of market share and erosion of margins from low cost imports damaging profitability of long established French manufacturer of electrical fittings

SOLUTION: Business Excellence worked with the client to focus the organisation on meeting target profit margins by redesigning existing product lines and leveraging the knowledge to develop next generation products. The process involved training the Purchasing, Engineering and Manufacturing staff in "Target Costing" and then assisting them in setting up and running their Target Costing process over 3 workshop sessions conducted in French aver  a 4 month period. Training was also provided in Value Engineering, Design for Manufacturing and in applying lean best practice in production operations to meet target costs.

RESULTS: New products developed in France for production in France at market competitive rates meeting corporate profitability targets have transformed defeatism and despair into action-orientated "business excellence".

PROBLEM A Luxembourg company exporting globally repeatedly failed to deliver on time due to wrong product in stock, incorrectly forecasted by customer service planning; despite having the equivalent of one year’s sales in stock in Asia. Turnover was lost to competitors.

SOLUTION Business Excellence worked swiftly with the organisation's production, logistics and sales department, applied lean principles to design a self-regulating intercontinental supply chain using "Kanbans" to manage customer needs through the supply chain. Employees were trained to use the system in one day.

RESULTS Cost invested in stock was reduced by 70%. Customer satisfaction from on time deliveries is at 100% no missed deliveries have occurred since. The capital investment to implement the project, which replaced multiple complex computerised systems was less than 300€ and 700 000 € of working capital has been freed up for further expansion of global exports.

Long Supply Chains

Easy to get out of control with classic MRP software

Managed with Kanban System (Prototype after Workshop)

PROBLEM: Financial Reports generated by a multi-national organisation in Luxembourg for control of a 50 million € Engineering budget in 5 countries for 70 service providers were not fit for purpose, leading to cost over-runs, spending spiraling out of control and cuts to essential spending on new projects.

SOLUTION:  Business Excellence "Lean Principles" were applied to redesign the financial forecasting, budgeting and reporting processes in a series of workshops involving the stakeholders from both the Finance Department and 70 Budget Responsible Directors to achieve a coherent, integrated and streamlined process, enabling real time financial planning and control within target budgets.

RESULTS: Total Business Excellence "Lean" cost reduction of over 170 million € of Engineering costs over a 10 year period. Profit margin on sales was increased by 7% on annual sales of 500 million €. 

SUSTAINABILITY: The cost of producing the reports was halved and the quality infinitely improved as the new output was configurable at the point of use, replacing "Telephone Directory" sized reports in account number jargon with dynamic pivot tables, so the decision makers can filter for their specific requirements. 50% of Finance department's FTE redeployed. Ecological impact of moving from printed reports to on screen displays.