Linking Operational Requirements to Strategic Goals
The Client
ESG Rail plays a significant role in the development of the UK's rolling stock, offering innovative and value-led strategic advice, technical consultancy and technology integration.
Under DB Systemtechnik ownership, one of Europe's largest railway consultancies, ESG possess the expertise, capability and resource to enable industry growth and change.
Based in Derby, home to the largest cluster of rail companies in the world, they provide consultancy services to many of the UKs train operators, manufacturers, oweners and maintainers.
Summary
As a result of rapid growth ESG found themselves having to function operationally rather than strategically in order to meet demand. This placed both systems and worforce under stress and created an obstacle to long term sustainable development. The SWOT Team's Team Action Management (TAM) programme facilitated the realignment of operational requirements to the organisation's long term strategy in a way that was both sustainable and fully supported by all staff.
Challenges
Following several years of significant growth in revenues and customer base, ESG found itself needing to refocus the business in order to address both the usual growing pains of growth, which had challenged systems and placed enormous strain on the workforce, and to create a model for future profitable growth.
Previous initiatives had faltered and the organisation needed a quick but sustainable way to engage the whole business in a comprehensive improvement initiative linking tactical planning to strategic goals.
How The SWOT Team Helped
Our TAM programme jump-started the organisation into a continuous improvement mind-set
Over the course of just a few weeks bottle necks had been identified and addressed; waste eliminated; and control processes changed to facilitate the business' continuing and sustainable growth.
The power of TAM to deliver early results lies in its ability to engage the whole organisation in delivering its long term business objectives. This is done by ensuring the understanding and buy in of the business needs outside each individual's own specific remit; ensuring that the whole workforce is pulling in the same direction.
Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans
ESG saw essential initiatives, that had previously faltered, completed with new energy. This is due to the team involvement rather than being a top-down instruction. This creates many advantages for the executive team, not least in re-establishing its role of focussing more on strategic leadership. The value of this in itself makes TAM a high-yield investment.
"I am a strong advocate of the TAM and particularly the highly-experienced team that delivered it successfully for ESG. For us, the SWOT Team provided much more to the business than the delivery of the programme. I would recommend any team-based organisation to implement TAM as its primary improvement tool."
Martin Horsman
Managing Director, ESG Rail
Team Action Management
The TAM programme facilitates a complete overview of the organisation, identifying and addressing the bottlenecks, waste and opportunities that routinely slip underneath the radar of other initiatives; in a fraction of the time.
