Organizational development in the chemical industry

The challenges for the organization

The organization faces multiple tasks and limited resources to improve a complex production environment.

Our client's organization is characterized by a cross-functional team structure that encompasses various areas of responsibility. The first team that we at wibas supported works in the production area and consists of employees from occupational safety, quality assurance, emission protection, plant operators, foremen and plant managers. These different areas of responsibility lead to a variety of challenges, particularly in the optimal prioritization of tasks.

Another significant challenge was that the operational staff had to react immediately when the production plant came to a standstill. The plants have been in operation for a long time and the employees are experienced in maintaining them or reacting quickly to problems. In such situations, the priority was to get the plant up and running again quickly, which left little room for strategic development.

Teaming with our customer - acting together

The starting point for this initiative was a cross-functional team responsible for maintaining, renewing and improving the production facility. In an initial workshop, the team members jointly identified necessary changes and developed proposed solutions. The improvements identified included

• Optimization of knowledge transfer: Digitalization of the production process through digital checklists and process descriptions for fast and up-to-date information for plant operators in the production process. This led to a sustainable increase in the quality of the manufactured products.
• Prioritization of topics: Implementation of an effective prioritization to balance the most important operational improvements with strategic improvements.
• Improving productivity: Reducing the total time spent in meetings for all team members.

An unexpected challenge arose after the first workshop due to the coronavirus pandemic, which required a switch to remote working. Some team members initially struggled to get to grips with applications such as Microsoft Teams. However, through mutual support based on individual strengths and a culture of "learning from each other", the team overcame this hurdle. The result was productive collaboration on an equal footing, even though some of the team members did not know each other well beforehand.

Our contribution - impact and positive effects

In the very first workshop, we realized that many team members were overloaded by a high number of meetings - seven team members had around 40 meetings per sprint. By introducing Scrum, we were able to reduce the number of meetings by around two thirds, which created capacities that were not available before.

External tasks brought to the team were now prioritized and filtered by the product owner, which was an important learning curve for the team. Over time, the team understood that not every task had to be completed immediately. This was a crucial step in the further development of the team. A consultant from wibas took on the role of Scrum Master at the beginning and trained an internal employee of the organization to take on this role in the future.

Through regular retrospectives, the team learned to better assess its performance. The team showed rapid learning and improvement curves and achieved stable, predictable performance from the fifth sprint onwards. Initially reserved team members gradually recognized the advantages of the agile way of working, especially through the daily stand-up meetings (dailies), which significantly improved coordination and collaboration.

The Scrum team developed into a role model within the organization. The members of the Scrum team acted as internal multipliers by inviting members of other teams to their daily meetings and sprint changes to get to know the new Scrum way of working and work organization. The results achieved and the positive working atmosphere were noticed throughout the company - this promoted the understanding and acceptance of agile methods.

The next step was scaling - the start of a transformation project. Further production teams were introduced to agile methods and additional internal Scrum Masters were trained.

Cross-team quarterly planning (stage planning) was introduced for vertical scaling. Within these, it became clear that the teams were defining too many and often too small tasks, which led to a large number of dependencies and a backlog of tasks. Through targeted coaching, the teams improved in the preparation and implementation of stage planning.

This joint planning enabled the teams to better organize the implementation of strategic changes. It was recognized that implementing the strategy required work that needed to be organized and prioritized. Staged planning allowed common priorities to be formed between the functional silos, each of which had their own priorities, which simplified collaboration. Tasks were now processed as soon as they were due and waiting times were greatly reduced.

The portfolio level was established as a further step. One important realization was that too many tasks were planned during the stage planning. Many things were started at the same time and nothing was really completed. The team members often felt overloaded, like on a crowded highway, and did not make any progress. The Kanban principle "stop starting, start finishing" was introduced at portfolio level to focus on completing tasks and avoid continuous overload.

Through these structured and strategic measures, the company was able to make its organizational processes more efficient, improve cooperation and ultimately achieve a sustainable improvement in strategy implementation.

Conclusion

The organization was in a much better position after one year: more effective handling of strategic changes, less work backlog, higher employee satisfaction while maintaining high-quality production processes.