Total cost reduction of 9% — operational excellence at a shipyard group with ChangeMaker

Management saw concrete opportunities to significantly increase the company's EBIT margin through operational-excellence initiatives. Potential was identified along the entire operational value chain — for example in engineering and requirements management, in outsourced services and contract manufacturing, in component logistics, in cross-cutting production processes and their digitalization, as well as in site-specific operations. Management decided to realize this potential in a comprehensive operational efficiency program across all sites and at the central functions, drawing on the full methodological toolbox including Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, OEE, TPM, etc.

The program was structured into four areas: Engineering, Logistics, Operations, and cross-cutting topics. The areas developed a total of 130 initiatives, driven forward by 70 initiative owners. The implementation process was steered with a maturity-level model and the implementation phase was secured with 1,200 tasks, i.e. about 10 tasks per initiative. The impact of the initiatives was tracked in ChangeMaker both with operational KPIs (First Time Right, Inventory Turnover, On Time Delivery, etc.) and with time effects and cost savings. At all committee levels, the owners reported substantive progress and project impact live from ChangeMaker — the reports were generated automatically, so that the effort for data consolidation and report preparation was eliminated.