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Fewer errors, happier customers: a strategy that works

HR Business Support Boswinkel

Assignment: The number of incorrect, non-compliant standard and custom products delivered had to be reduced by Y% within X time to xxx for financial reasons and to increase customer satisfaction.

Organization: They worked with a lot of components and therefore also with a lot of suppliers and guaranteed a delivery time of 7 working days. Customers were dealers and DIY stores in Europe, end users were the consumers.

How did Boswinkel & Partners find the organization? 

  • As interim production manager, Boswinkel & Partners was part of the Management Team.
  • There were 600 employees.
  • As production manager, Boswinkel & Partners managed a number of team leaders, head of technical service and head of the business office.
  • The interim position was filled for 3 days a week.

Boswinkel & Partners' approach! 

  1. The 8 quality management principles were put into practice.
  2. Goal: Getting orders to the customers in accordance with 100% of the specifications and if that doesn't work, better good and too late than on time and wrong.

 The 8 quality management principles applied in practice: 

  1. Customer focus: Specifications in the orders are leading.
  2. Leadership: Ensured that the direct employees became the leading coalition (Kotter).
  3. Employee involvement: Provided training, improvement groups and used in analyses of quality issues and in solutions.
  4. Process approach: Instead of 100% final inspection, random samples at critical points in the entire process from order to delivery.
  5. System approach: PDCA applied to everything.
  6. Continuous improvement: All incorrectly delivered products to dealers and DIY stores that were returned were analysed per week, causes were addressed and the effects were measured again. Causes that were found were: Certain suppliers, the order document that was used by the dealers, certain groups of employees and the functioning of some team leaders.
  7. Decision-making based on facts: If no historical data was available, 0-measurements had to be set up, which caused a lot of resistance in connection with productivity.
  8. Win-Win relationships with suppliers: Boswinkel & Partners encountered 1 supplier that supplied poor raw materials and the organization initially responded "that's their problem", forgetting the one-liner "shit in is shit out".

How did Boswinkel & Partners fill in the three days a week? 

  • 1 day a week analysing data with direct employees.
  • 1 day a week walking around the factory and talking to people under the motto "if you believe in something, you shouldn't get tired of talking about it all the time", the so-called management by walking around.
  • 1 day a week facilitating the management team and improvement groups.

What did Boswinkel & Partners encounter? 

  • Culture of "that's how we've been doing it for years, the monkey and the banana story".
  • Management did not believe in the capabilities of its own employees that Boswinkel & Partners wanted to use.
  • Should you have the employee do random samples or not?
  • Setting up 0-measurements was at the expense of productivity.
  • The previously mentioned supplier problem.
  • The supplier of a special machine that was a worldwide monopolist.
  • The manager of the client of Boswinkel & Partners, which did not click. 

Achieved result:

Assignment demonstrably completed after which the permanent successor took over and continued the working method.