Leading Medical Device Company Improves On-Time Delivery with Shamaym
Challenge
The Operations Department within a global medical device company wanted to improve on-time delivery by establishing processes and routines in their work that would help the team learn, retain knowledge, and use it to avoid repeated mistakes.
The Department receives parts from around the globe and is responsible for inspecting and assembling them into medical equipment that is shipped to hospitals worldwide. The smallest operational change ignites a lengthy process that requires sign-off from each team member. Teams were looking for ways to shorten the process and accelerate approval and delivery times.
Customer Profile
- Industry: Medical Devices
- Employees: 1,300
- Location: 40 countries
Solution
The company deployed Shamaym with 12 team leaders and 50 employees across the Operations Department. Managers were trained to support their teams in building learning routines that included regular debriefing, sharing of lessons learned within the team, and continuous revisiting of those lessons to change work processes.
Teams clearly defined what events in their workday would be good opportunities to learn from. For example, to decrease customer visits per issue, the Field Support team started to debrief after each customer visit. To increase its on-time delivery rate, the Planning Team debriefs each discrepancy in its delivery schedule. To reduce the time to reach project milestones, Project Managers debrief their progress regularly.
Results
With Shamaym’s support, the Operations Department established learning routines within and between teams, and these have led to improvements in KPI across the Department:
- Project milestones were reached 24% more often
- On-time delivery improved by 11%
- Second visits for field support issues were no longer needed
Shamaym was a game changer for the Operations Department. Employees began to address issues that had been neglected for years because they seemed, according to one employee, “too complex to touch”. “Shamaym helps us break down big problems into small corrective actions that can be implemented in a very short timeframe,” that employee said.
The QA Operations team decided to create a monthly Shamaym session with their leading supplier, which laid a foundation for new best practices and reducing unnecessary iterations. Managers in the Department harnessed Shamaym in their end-of-year summaries and at the end of any unplanned major events. Shamaym provided the structure to tackle the most important issues, break them down, and define future actions, with little added effort on the managers’ part.
Learning led to improved processes between teams, as well. For example, every two weeks the Operations Manager and his directors choose an event or process that involves multiple players across teams in his department, and invite them to debrief. Rather than measuring progress against team-level KPI, cross-team learning seeks concrete process improvements that affect the entire department. A recent cross-team learning session resulted in a refined traceability procedure. Another session led to an updated change order that managers presented in a department-wide training session.
Recognizing its impact on delivery timelines and business results, other departments and teams within the company, including the QA Department, have since implemented Shamaym.