Diane Tibbles
Marketing Manager
+44 (0)1653 628596
Diane is a highly motivated and driven CIM qualified senior marketeer with over 20 years’ experience, she has built her career in a variety of industries in both stand-alone, managerial, and consultative positions.
She is confident, tenacious, and adaptable with a proven track record of delivering first-class marketing management and stakeholder satisfaction. With skills and experience that cover all areas of marketing, she has a solid reputation as a visionary problem-solver and creative tactician to deliver marketing strategies and positively implement direction and change. An excellent communicator and leader recognised for building, leading, and training high performing teams.
“I love to read; I am a hoarder of information, which feeds my thirst for learning, ensuring that if I don’t know the immediate answer, I will make it my mission to find it.”
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Lean value chain analysis and design for global precision engineering products leader in aerospace industry
The issue
- A complex multi-stage casting, machining and coating operation manufacturing precision components for the aerospace industry
- Underperforming organisation and low levels of ownership for improvement
- Extremely low velocity through the process, with poor yields and excessive scrap
- High inventories of work in progress and finished goods
- Production measures encouraging over-production
- Silo mentality in operations exacerbating the WIP situation
- Disaffected workforce with little interest in driving continuous improvement and no effective performance management in place
Solution
- Analyse the current situation to articulate the operational improvement potential (yield uplift and inventory reduction)
- Create the business case for change (P&L and cash impact)
- Design a pilot to create an integrated supply chain for the largest volume product including suppliers and JV partners
- Detail design of a pull model and elimination of WIP stages along the entire supply chain
- Re-design of the layout and organisation to separate ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ operations to reduce rework
- Launch of a continuous improvement approach within the shop floor to tackle scrap, rework and productivity issues
- Design and introduction of a cascaded performance management framework
The results
- 40% reduction in inventory identified through WIP elimination
- The feasibility of a 50% reduction in production lead time confirmed
- 10 percentage-point improvement in yield performance from closer process control
- Plan to deliver £5m savings in-year agreed
- Changes to ways of working implemented in pilot cells with Lean work-flow approach trialled
- Programme of Lean training and continuous improvement projects implemented
- New KPIs are being used to drive the performance of the value chain in place of traditional cost absorption metrics
An award-winning team
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Operating model refinement and commercial focus to deliver a step change in business performance
The issue
- A subsidiary of a global defence company, providing technology-based R&D solutions and advisory services to government and defence organisations and private sector companies at the cutting edge of secure communications and cyber warfare
- Despite repeated calls by Group to improve, the business continuously failed to meet performance expectations on revenue growth, profit margin and free cash flow
- The business was suffering from an overly-layered and siloed organisation structure, with burdensome management processes and lacking commercial focus
- The underlying issues were structural and an absence of effective performance management, wrongly being justified because business discipline would stifle creativity and innovation
Solution
- Undertook a business-wide design and business case development stage to anchor the current performance failings and the required changes
- Implemented over a 12-month period working alongside the business unit leadership with a structured plan;
- A new leadership team established, with stronger governance processes, metrics, and proactive staff engagement
- Simplified the operating model and aligned capabilities to market needs
- Re-framed value propositions and initiated the move into critical national infrastructure
- Implemented resource management to drive productivity uplift
- Implemented new mentoring and HR processes to underpin talent management
- Supported post-implementation by refreshing the plan
The results
- 29% revenue uplift (versus budget target)
- 18% Return on Sales achieved versus a 15% target for the financial year
- 90% improvement in business cash flow
- 10% points increase in Engineer productivity, with a continued increase to 74% utilisation in year 2, and climbing
- Transformed the operating model and business culture to be customer and commercially focused
- Established performance management at the business and individual level
- Underpinned changes with disciplines, governance, reward structures and visibility
- The Project won the Management Consultancy Association’s award for “Performance Improvement in the Private Sector” with full sponsorship of the client
An award-winning team