Case Studies
Dupont
Barry Owens took over as Business Leader at DuPont upon the retirement his predecessor. He decided to achieve DuPont’s aggressive goals using Rummler-Brache Group’s methodology.
Rich Deegan, Product Manager, served as the internal facilitator during the initial stages of the implementation. The following interview describes their experience in applying the Rummler-Brache approach.
BRACHE: What was the business need that triggered your change effort?
OWENS: There were two triggers. First of all, Teflon Finishes could no longer operate as a “mind-sized” business. By “mind-sized,” I mean small enough that it could be run from the head of a single individual. Secondly, our financials were sound, but we saw an opportunity for more rapid, entrepreneurial growth. However, our infrastructure couldn’t support our target, which was to triple our revenues without an equivalent increase in cost. We knew that achieving our goals meant introducing 6-12 times more products than we had in the recent past. We needed a tool to help us profitably implement this ambitious growth strategy...
Rogers Cable
Rogers Cable is Canada's largest cable television service provider with more than two million television customers and one million Internet subscribers The company’s management was concerned about retaining its market share in the face of rapidly growing competition. An equally pressing concern was reducing and controlling operating costs. Engineering innovation had driven the company’s success. Management decided that to maintain its market leadership, Rogers Cable would have to improve customer satisfaction and manage operating processes for maximum efficiency.
Reliable reception was clearly a major factor in customer satisfaction. Therefore, the two areas for improvement were identified as network availability and the time it took to restore interrupted service. Network availability was already at 99.94%-good, but not good enough in management’s opinion. The mean time for restoring interrupted service was between three and four hours-not nearly good enough. Getting significant improvement in both these areas would involve fine-tuning and aligning all the processes that went into managing the network...
Bell Canada
Bell Canada launched a three-year transformation project to reduce operating costs by $1.7 billion. The company wanted to reorganize to focus on their various lines of business, their markets, and their customers. According to Mike Brown, Director of Bell Transformation/Corporate, the scope of the planned change was unprecedented. The company had created 12 major process teams, and identified 174 improvement initiatives to address. “It was unheard of-you just don’t do all that in three years.” After considering many consultants, Bell Canada selected Rummler-Brache to guide their transformation initiatives. “A key point was the ease of understanding the Rummler-Brache methodology, and the transfer of skills,” said Brown. “They don’t just come in to do the work. They also trained facilitators within the company.”
The Rummler-Brache methodology was not new to Bell Canada. The consultants had worked with Bell Canada’s Technology and Network operating group to achieve significant reductions in operating costs and cycle time, and improvements in customer satisfaction...
KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root)
KBR’s mission is to be the “Best-in-Class” provider of innovative and commercially proven solutions for local, state, and federal governments and selected private-sector customers.
Specializing in engineering, construction, program/project management, and operations and maintenance services, KBR already has an impressive portfolio of best-in-class work practices. But their expertise would often be overlooked. In-house surveys showed that KBR was not making the “A” list of companies considered for high-profile projects and was lagging behind its projected growth rate.
As Randy Harl, president of KBR, put it: “Plainly, we needed to generate more business and be more effective in positioning our services. After all, we’re not selling toasters; this is a long-term, complex sale in which the client needs a lot of confidence in our abilities.”
When KBR decided to hire an outside consulting partner, it looked no further than the company that wrote the book on performance-Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart...
Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation, headquartered in San Ramon, California is a multi-national energy company.
The refining marketplace is becoming more competitive. Cost and profitability were driven by excess refining capacity. Many of Chevron’s competitors were divesting from their refinery products business. Senior management at Chevron’s Products Company wanted to develop a new strategy to address these marketplace issues. The Product Management team knew the company had to transition from a refinery-efficiency strategy to a market-driven strategy.
At the time, Chevron was producing millions of barrels a day through different refineries. The company had three strong functional areas within the organization: Refining, Marketing, and Supply & Distribution, each operating more independently than desired. The team began to look for a partner to help them devise and implement a whole new supply chain system.
According to Peter McCrea, Vice President, “We recognized that our system for planning and managing the supply chain, from crude acquisition to product distribution, was not working as well as it should. We had been working on it for a long time and were not making much progress. We decided we needed to take a holistic look at the entire supply chai.”...