Thyssen Stairlifts Case Study Case study of a manufacturer and installer of stairlifts implementing BaaN IV ERP system

by Phil Robinson
www.bpic.co.uk - comments to phil@bpic.co.uk

Background to Thyssen Stairlifts Thyssen are a multinational company with headquarters in Holland, focused on "access for all". Thyssen Stairlifts will specify, manufacture and install wheelchairs access lifts and stairlifts in both commercial and domestic environments The Business Excellence Project In July 1996 Alan Dunkley, the Managing Director of Thyssen Stairlifts and David Kevern the Financial Controller attended a Business Excellence Seminar given by Mike Salmon of MRP Ltd. Following this seminar Mike went to visit Thyssen with a view to finding a way to improve their planning and manufacturing processes.

Jargon Warning If this case study uses terms with which you are unfamiliar, you can look them up in the Jargon Buster at http://www.bpic.co.uk/jargon.htm. For more details see Business Excellence (ISBN 0-952-8885-05) by Phil Robinson.

The project had not got very far when the Dutch headquarters of Thyssen approved a project to implement the BaaN IV ERP system. There were a number of business distractions so that it was not until July 1998 that Alan Dunkley, Shaun Stephenson, their IT Manager and Bev Earl, the newly appointed Business Excellence Project Leader, attended MRP Ltd.’s 5 day Business Excellence Fundamentals course followed by the Implementor’s Course.

A full implementation project was drawn up to implement BaaN IV by August 1999. Bev combined the BaaN IV software implementation requirements proposed by Baillie Associates of Nottingham with MRP Ltd’s experience with the business issues. The time scale was very tight for this "feature rich" package but essential as Thyssen’s current software was not year 2000 compliant. 

In addition to Bev, there were 2 other full time project team members including an undergraduate on 1 year secondment.

Bev saw her job as not just to plan but to inspire the company towards the Business Excellence vision. "Business Excellence is not about catching up it is about getting ahead" said Bev in the second edition of the project’s monthly "BaaN Door" magazine. Bev was also keen to make sure that those who took part in the project found the experience enjoyable as well as useful for the company.

BaaN Door itself was an inspirational magazine. Communication is nearly always a problem for companies and in times of rapid change the problem gets considerably worse. BaaN Door provided a valuable communication tool but was also fun. There was a competition with prizes, gossip, thought for the month, product news and recipes in addition to progress reports on the project and comments from Alan Dunkley. The magazine started in July 1998 and was issued every month until beyond the end of the project.

The Thyssen project was complicated by the need to ensure that both the new lift installation and the service section of the business were fully integrated into the project.

The project was broken down into 3 stages (they called them simulations) as follows:

Simulation I (November 1998 to March 1999)
Between November 1998 and March 1999 a total of 16 of Thyssen’s 110 employees attended 24 MRP Ltd. courses between them covering data accuracy, master scheduling, sales and operations planning, World Class Manufacturing and performance measures in addition to most of delegates attending the 5 day Business Excellence Fundamentals course.

Task forces met all day Monday and Tuesday mornings working through all the key issues to implement Sales and Operations Planning, new ways to manage demand and supply, getting data accuracy up to the required 98%, bill of material structure and accuracy, manufacturing, purchasing and performance measures to support and monitor the changes. Many of the task forces met every week from January until July.

During Simulation I the project team set up a conference room pilot where the software was tested out on a sample of Thyssen’s data. The conference room pilot was an invaluable training aid for both the software itself as well as the business excellence ideas. The team then set up a demonstration for Senior Managers on the pilot on 5th. March. To make the day fun as well as informative the project team acted out the business processes as they ran through the pilot.

Simulation II (March 1999 to May 1999)
Once the project team were comfortable with their Company II vision, the next job was to educate a team of internal educators in the software and business processes. The education process was then expanded to include all the operational managers who had a considerable input to the details of the operational processes. During this phase some managers were spending up to 3 ½ days per week on the project. The vision was re-configured based on managers’ comments.

Simulation III (May 1999 to 2nd. August 1999)
User training started in earnest in June starting with the software and then the new processes and procedures.

Conscious of the need to keep their procedures as simple as possible, in July they organised a 1 day, in house JIT course run by Phil Robinson. The course helped them introduce some kanbans which simplified their processes and so implementation.

They decided to carry out all data migration manually by data "owners" to get the highest possible level of data accuracy. Static data was transferred by 9th. July to give them the opportunity for one last simulation on 15th. July. Finally the dynamic data was entered during the weekend of 29th. / 30th. July by the project team and "volunteers". The cut-over to BaaN IV and the Company II vision happened, as planned, on Monday 2nd. August 1999. Not only did the project finish on time but it was under the budgeted cost.

A significant characteristic of the project was the commitment and involvement of their Managing Director Alan Dunkley throughout the project. "I was running virtually without any managers for 3 months" he commented at one point.

As a result of this, Thyssen re-structured into 3 divisions, Customer Service and Administration (including IT), Operations and Services. Bev was appointed Manager of the Customer Services and Administration Division. The management had to refocus personnel to ensure customers' requirements were met. Since the Business Excellence project and restructure, Thyssen have reported the best trading results and have improved lead times from weeks to days. The straight lift is now made to stock using kanban and statistical inventory control. We can now supply a standard straight lift in 24 hours. Although there have been a few late deliveries, offering a 24 hour service is a great advantage in what is rapidly becoming a very competitive business. To maintain this service level it is imperative that Thyssen continues to work closely with its suppliers as receiving the correct parts at the right time is key to continued success.

Apart from the obvious advantages above, Thyssen now has a system that gives full visibility of orders, stock levels, purchase components and financial data, never available before, at the touch of a button. Although Thyssen agree they are not as fully in control of stock and WIP as they would like, we do now know the size of the problem and have a plan to gain control. Prior to this project we were almost working blind. Cycle counting a small sample of stock every day stock accuracy is currently 85% by part, by location..

We are now working on achieving an accurate Sales and Operations Plan that will not only achieve the Business Plan but is achievable by sales, administration and operations teams; all working to "one set of numbers".

Thyssen have also just launched there fully automated Production and Installation schedule which not only schedules the order to the due date but alerts us to the fact that production could be slipping by monitoring the different stages the order goes through on the BaaN IV system.

The Thyssen management agree that changing business processes in line with those taught by MRP Ltd. and implementing BaaN IV proved very difficult initially, the advantages gained far outweigh the pain and heartache all personnel went through.

10 months after cut-over Bev completed our on line ABCD checklist. It was very gratifying to see that Business Excellence had become a way of life for Thyssen and they were still progressing. Their biggest remaining problem was with their smaller outside vendors who were not delivering reliably. The knock-on effect was that the master schedule was not able to be followed and work in progress was not under as tight a control as necessary. Thyssen had got their top 4 vendors under control but need to extend the same discipline to the others, which takes time. I would expect that without too much more work Thyssen could soon join the ranks of class "A" companies.

Thyssen’s implementation of BaaN IV was undoubtedly a great success and a tribute to the hard work and commitment of not just Alan and Bev but all the managers and staff at Thyssen. The critical success factors were a committed MD, a full time and enthusiastic project leader and a high level of education and understanding in all the users of both best practice in planning and control and the software.

As a final comment it is worth remembering that the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary!