The problem
“It (the manual) was impenetrable”
The client, “Big K”, is a £20m turnover company, importing and distributing barbeque coals and associated equipment to the retail and restaurant trade.
The existing 9001 system had been written by and was “owned” by the external consultant. The new general manager with a 30 year career in logistics had been presented with a “four inch file” written in “standard speak”. It was not understood, owned or used.
The approach and the solution
The senior team were assembled and a re-implementation team established. The tasks undertaken included:
• Creating a fully formulated business plan complete with:
o A robust analysis of the external competitive environment addressing the risks from unstable supplier countries
o 1, 2 & 3 year (financial and non financial) aims and objectives
• Understanding the core operational process flow and the associated KPI’s with which to manage performance and improvement
• A complete redevelopment of all policies, processes and procedures so they reflected the logic and language of the business
• Involvement of all staff in the redevelopment processes so they both owned the system and improved it over time.
Finally, in order to put the systems at the heart of the company and everything they do, the system was renamed “The Big K Way”.
The outcome
On completion, the general manager commented:
• “We wanted the systems to be ours …we wanted to write it and we did… it’s now our system…we own it”
• “We wanted to use the system to ‘guard’ our quality and to use it to find opportunities to improve…this transition has given us the chance for us to do exactly that…it’s something completely different”