SUPPLY CHAIN
One might assume such a change required a drastic overhaul of staff too , but this has not been the case for AkzoNobel . Many of its teams have worked together their entire career but while they are all very experienced , they lacked knowledge of operational excellence . For Hernandez Flanagan , the key was not hiring new people , but training the talent the business already had .
“ I didn ’ t make many changes . I brought in a few new leaders – one for capex , one for global supply chain , and so on – but aside from that , I kept the Akzo team and trained them . We had to make some adjustments along the way , but thanks to getting existing staff on board with change management , we ’ ve really knocked it out of the park . “ They know this business , and they now have gained new knowledge on operational excellence and are really driving it . They ’ re now wildly set for success .”
Hernandez Flanagan had also deployed similar systems at GE , SABIC , and Novelis .
“ The reason this model works so well is because we kept it simple ,” she says . “ We had the right blend of existing talent who took the training very well , and now we ’ re looking at growing talent .”
Hernandez Flanagan considers it a responsibility of hers and AkzoNobel ’ s to invest in the industry and emerging talent , and so the team is working on creating and training fresh talent with education programs that will fast-forward them into the market .
This education also extends to systems which are increasingly becoming industry standard , such as Kaizen and Six Sigma , and how AkzoNobel can apply them to itself . Hernandez Flanagan is now working on value stream mapping to solidify the company ’ s continuous improvement strategy yet further , increasing site capacity and employee education side-by-side . The teams are constantly growing and training , and safety and productivity continues to increase as a result . “ Whether you ’ re looking at productivity through optimization , maintenance , procurement , or opening up capacity doing value
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