Lean & Operational Excellence and Independent ERP Consultants

ERP systems collect a lot of data about an organisation’s operations. Business Intelligence (BI) can allow this data to be analysed and presented to support effective decision making. So why is BI often an afterthought in an ERP implementation?
 

In operations where the short interval (e.g. daily or weekly) workload varies, the most common method of distributing the work is to share it equally between the available people. We call this method “available work through available people”. The consequence of this approach is that even low daily workloads expand to fill the day resulting in poor productivity. Carefully designed standard work can improve your department’s performance by consistently making the most out of people’s time.

Improving the end user experience seems to be high on the agenda recently for ERP vendors. Which areas have vendors been focussing on?

In our experience, if there are functional gaps or data silos, sometimes the best course of action is to extend the legacy ERP system. This may not always be obvious or even popular with the client, but there are often significant benefits.

Warehouse productivity improvements of up to 20% can be brought about by applying load levelling principles to workload planning.

Day to day operations of individual departments in life science companies rely on many decisions made outside of each department’s own remit. When embarking on a Lean strategy, the pillars of operational excellence (Levelling and Flow) can be supported by increasing awareness of how each department functions and explaining constraints.
 

Why do some companies go to the trouble and expense of documenting detailed functional requirements only to completely ignore these requirements later in the ERP selection process?

When working with ERP systems in the life sciences sector there are two key questions in relation to computer systems validation (CSV) which clients always ask. Which parts of the pharmaceutical value chain are subject to CSV? Which modules of an ERP system need to be validated?

You’re a site leader three months into your Lean Programme and on the face of it things are going well but you’ve got doubts that the organisation structure is supporting your lean journey in the way you’d want.

If you ask any knowledgeable buyer for the most important characteristic of a ‘retail’ ERP system, their response is more than likely to be speed. Speed is indeed fundamental but you will need to think seriously about the functionality also. Not all ERP systems will have the right functionality and, certainly, not all ERP systems will have the right functionality at the requisite speed.  

Laboratories are not the same as manufacturing environments so do the standard Lean ‘Wastes’ even apply in Labs?

In an effort to deploy Lean across their organisations, many companies have invested heavily in large multi site programmes supported by dedicated internal Lean resources. The results from these programmes are quite often patchy and underwhelming. So why do these programs under perform?

QC test methods and the overall testing approach employed in laboratories can themselves be inherently wasteful. What steps should be taken to identify and eliminate such waste?

Recently in laboratories, there has been a notable shift towards dedicating resources to specific work streams and sub-streams, in the attempt to improve service levels. This is due in large part to a misapplication of the key Lean principle of developing ‘Value Streams’.

Typically, laboratory Standard Operating Procedures and Work Instructions are wordy, patch-worked documents and a hindrance to testing analysts and reviewers alike. Over their life cycle, procedures usually become increasingly difficult to decipher due to multiple disjointed revisions. As a result, training and routine testing often relies on the retained knowledge of key experienced personnel, with an accepted culture of ‘Chinese whispers’. This dependence on undocumented hints and reminders can be tackled by applying Lean thinking to the design and layout of Laboratory SOP’s. 
 

Lack of senior management commitment is routinely listed as one of the major risk factors for ERP projects. But how can a lack of commitment manifest itself and what can a project manager do about it?

Implementing an ERP system is a huge undertaking for most organisations. A strong internal implementation team will greatly increase the likelihood of project success. 
 

The internet is replete with web sites offering pre-configured sets of business requirements for use in ERP selection projects. The claim is that much time and effort can be saved by using such resources – in fact pre-configured requirements specifications tend to focus effort in the wrong areas. 

It seems reasonably straightforward: select and implement a new ERP system to replace those legacy systems that simply have to go. “ERP is a one-stop shop,” you’ve been told. “ERP will do everything you need.” But what about that system you’ve just read about that provides amazing functionality for one specific part of your operation and has features that could be invaluable to your business? Will ERP systems be able to provide the same depth of functionality? Maybe 100% ERP isn’t the answer? What should you do?

Having decided that a new ERP system is the right move for your organisation, the next step is to select a system. Despite the consolidation in the ERP market over the past ten years, there is still a wide variety of choice. Identifying the system and implementation partner that best suits your business and budget is a critical step towards a successful implementation. This requires a structured selection process carefully managed according to agreed principles. Avoiding failure in this process means steering clear of the “Seven Deadly Sins of ERP Selection”.           

When starting an ERP implementation, expected benefits are usually identified and used to justify the project spend – and then ignored during the implementation! Instead, the focus is on achieving budget and delivering the project on-time. This is a big mistake and broadening the focus can impact on the success of the project and ensure that the benefits are realised. 

For regulated industries such as those in the life sciences sector, computer systems need to be validated to prove regulatory compliance. When implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, companies must make sure that their validation plans form an integral part of the overall implementation project plan.

In recent years we have seen much of the traditional manufacturing industries in Europe relocate to the lower cost economies such as those in Asia. Governments across Europe are looking to the Services sector to replace the jobs which are being lost. Leaders speak of the “Knowledge Economy” or the “Smart Economy” as the way forward. This Opinion considers how service companies can have sophisticated and effective IT systems with affordable total cost of ownership.

So, the big decision has been made. The company is going to purchase an ERP system. You have got the backing of the MD, the CFO and the majority of the Board (there is always one!). All you have to do is “install it”. There are no more big decisions and no need to keep bothering the executives with any more big decisions on this matter, Right? Actually, the process has just started and there are a multitude of big decisions to make and you will certainly need the support of the executives in one crucial choice: Do you change some or all of the business processes to accommodate the new software or do you modify the software to fit the existing company processes?

One of the criteria used for measuring ERP project implementation success is budget versus actual. Achieving this goal starts before the project does, with the creation of a thorough and realistic budget.   

The relationships between the drug manufacturers, distributors and end customers are complex and taken with some of the physical characteristics of the pharmaceutical value chain introduce a number of challenges for ERP systems.

When you built the business case for your new ERP system, it included a list of expected benefits. Now that the system is live, have those benefits been realised and have you achieved the expected return on investment?

Stories of disastrous ERP projects are enough to ensure sleepless nights for CEOs or CIOs looking at the prospect of implementing a new ERP system. So what should you do to ensure that your project is a success?

One of the critical success factors in ERP system selection is the insistence of the organisation on a focused demonstration of the ERP system prior to the evaluation of a preferred vendor.

Traditionally, companies looking for enterprise applications such as ERP have had to choose between bespoke systems (building the applications in-house) or buying commercial packages from software vendors.  Open source, potentially, offers a third alternative.