oee are operations improvement specialists. Concentrating on operations disciplines, we help our customers to make the very best of their business in a sustainable way. Our team is made up of highly experienced operations professionals, who typically have worked for over ten years in operational line-management roles.
We consider that "operations" is a discipline in its own right and our offer includes;
Our customers are in Financial Services, Manufacturing, Public and Service sectors who process products, customers and information. The companies that we work with are at different stages on their journey to operational excellence. We concentrate on designing operations to deliver what customers want, on developing people’s skills and helping organisations to move towards “right-first-time”. Importantly, we define lean as “value creating” more than “waste reducing”.
For oee, it is important that we work with our customers in a partnership to transform their operations and create value both for their customers and for themselves.
Our key objective is to structure our support so effectively that our clients are self-sufficient in the improvement process, and critically, can scale up and sustain improvement activities.
In 2007, we became the first training and consulting organisation to be accredited by Cardiff Business School's Lean Enterprise Research Centre. The research centre has developed a lean competency system which gives oee a recognised structure to use to educate and coach clients. This 7 step methodology, through oee has been adopted by over 60 organisations in the UK. Over 1000 people have been accredited using it already.
Operations Management Capability DevelopmentA major UK High Street Bank had identified that a key lever to continuously improving its performance was to develop the operations management capability of its managers at all levels, from team leader to Senior Managers. The organisation had succeeded in implementing discrete ‘point improvements’ and step change through technology,...
Global Lean Training DeliveryThe clients’ problem to solve seemed relatively straightforward – a global corporation was deploying a lean programme with an urgent requirement to deliver strong efficiency and effectiveness benefits. oee was approached to deliver the global training arm of the programme covering all operational areas:
simple to complex processes;...
Processing Optimisation for Automated System DesignThe claims processing division of a major UK general insurer had embarked on an ambitious programme to specify and implement a bespoke, integrated claims management software system across their multi-site operation. The Company had the foresight and vision to recognise that an essential precursor to automation would be the optimisation, simplification,...
Improving the Financial Reporting Process in Finance Shared ServicesThe quarterly and monthly financial reporting process was causing significant concern and pressure in the Finance Shared Services Centre (FSSC). Although the reports were invariably presented on time, the complexity and ambiguity of the process created significant time pressures and stress on all staff involved. It was also very difficult to determine...
Improving Responsiveness in a high discretion operationA major UK insurer had experienced significant growth in its protection business over a short period. This growth had increased volumes in the crucial underwriting operation which attempted to respond by expanding the workforce. However, the operation itself had not been reviewed and improved and could not respond to market fluctuations since there...
Quality Control in the OfficeThe Investment department of a major Life and Pensions provider was under major pressure from its customers, with high levels of complaints and operational losses. An oee scoping exercise identified that the quality control systems in place were not fit for purpose. Some teams had high levels of manual checking but were still suffering high levels...
Actuarial Process and Financial Control DesignThe customer was embarking on an ambitious programme to upgrade their primary actuarial evaluation system. They had the foresight to recognise the need for structured process design to ensure operational robustness and efficiency. oee were engaged to provide the design methodology and operations expertise to deliver an effective and workable process....
Investment Administration ImprovementsThe investment admin department of a major life and pensions company had identified a clear need to improve both service and cost. Other work that oee had carried out elsewhere in the business convinced Investment Admin that a similar approach would be beneficial for them.
Improving Client Services in an Investment BankA large multi-national investment bank wanted to increase sales in one of their Equities Middle Office (MO) operations located in Hong Kong by improving the service that they were offering to their clients in terms of quality and timeliness of delivery.
Lean Sigma Problem SolvingA Leading global investment bank had recently set up a centralized corporate event announcements utility team to provide the bank with a source of validated announcement information. The team was suffering from the need to validate individual announcements multiple times as new data feeds arrived relating to the events. This repeated processing had...
Lean Transformation in Loan OperationsA global investment bank began a Lean programme to improve end-to-end process capability whilst also reducing operational costs. One area of focus was the Loan Operations team, who are responsible for issuing pricing letters and settling loan trades in the secondary market. Trading volumes vary widely and the team was experiencing very high demand...
Front to Back Process Review and Lean ImplementationA large investment bank identified that its global Client On-boarding process was highly manual, fragmented, inconsistent, and lacked transparency, with no service level agreements (SLAs) or effective measures in place.
These issues impacted negatively on:
Client satisfaction
Turnaround times
Productivity
Quality
Downstream...
Operational Review Deskilling activities to Increase CapacityEver mindful of the need to provide the council tax payer with best value for money, a county police force instigated a pilot process for improving the way they handle reports of household burglaries. This involved staff in their call management centre taking full details from the victim over the telephone, so avoiding the need for the police officer...
Lean Training and Development ProgrammeThe introduction of World Class Commissioning to primary care trusts heralded a fundamental change to the way their staff worked. They were no longer managing healthcare provision directly but were commissioning services from arms length providers instead. Although central policy guidance was available, the detail of how commissioning would be...
Identifying the Size of the PrizeIn late 2007 a government payments agency was mid way through the third year of operation of a new payments scheme. After a difficult start targets were now being broadly achieved. Having reached stability of operations, the agency felt it was timely to review operating practices and seek to optimise processes, whilst continuing to improve customer...
Lean - Proof of concept in branch networkA large public sector organisation wanted to maximize its sales volumes and improve customer service. Facing budgetary constraints, a difficult employee relations climate and perceived high utilisation of branch resources, the organization asked oee to help them develop a lean operating model for its branch network.
Lean in a Retail NetworkA major High Street Bank had experienced a decline in sales over several consecutive years. Against a backdrop of increasing costs, operating margins had been squeezed. The bank wanted to address this issue through the adoption of lean tools and techniques to improve seller capacity and help to deliver both increased sales and front line seller...
Lean Events – Releasing Capacity QuicklyA major UK High Street Bank was under significant pressure from the market to reduce its cost base by 30% over a 2 year period. In order to achieve these savings the Bank decided to implement a series of short and focused interventions (Lean Events) to deliver rapid capacity increase in a number of pilot sites, and then to deploy a scalable roll out...
Developing a Relationship Based Operating ModelThe new business processing division of a major high street bank had identified it was losing business due to:
Low customer advocacy (measured by net promoter score)
Bottle-necks and delays in credit line approvals
High telephony wait times and abandonment
High levels of customer complaints around process...
Designing a Business Operating Modeloee was asked to work with a Major UK Retail Bank’s Account Management Unit (AMU). The AMU, which services around 15m customers, had developed over time by combining the key operations of telephony and account management. The combined entity had then undergone a series of organisational initiatives with little structured or systematic design...
Creating Capacity in Sales, Service and AdministrationA large division of a major high street bank wanted to create extra capacity to achieve cost saving targets. Lean was viewed as a key enabler for development of a sustainable capability through effective and structured skills transfer. A variety of projects were identified to achieve the capacity release required, whilst training and mentoring staff...
Creating a Platform for ImprovementA new senior management team had been appointed to run a business unit servicing customers of high net worth within a large Financial Institution. Although this business unit made significant profits, the customer base was eroding and it was perceived to be inefficient and not customer focused, especially in its back office operations. A small team...
Combining Risk Management and Lean ThinkingA major high street bank had enjoyed many years of successful and sustained lean implementation. Whilst the financial and lead-time benefits were well recognised by the risk function, it was felt by some influential stakeholders within the bank that some of the benefits delivered by “lean” had been to the detriment of quality and internal...
Homeloan Management Limted (HML)HML is the UK’s premier third party mortgage servicer with over 20 years experience. Backed by the Skipton Group, HML currently handles assets in excess of £50 billion for over 35 clients including building societies, investment banks and non-conforming lenders. HML is based across four sites in the UK and employs around 2,000 staff handling...
Virgin MediaVirgin Media (VM) is a leading entertainment and communications business providing the first ‘‘quad-play’’ offering of television, broadband, fixed line telephone and mobile telephone services in the U.K.
Lean Logistics Productivity Improvements Central function & Warehouse operationsA third party logistic services business was experiencing increasingly aggressive price competition, which in turn was creating pressure on margins. In order to remain competitive, it was seen as essential to make significant cuts in operational costs but without impacting customer service or quality. oee was asked to carry out an initial scoping of...
Competitive Pressures and Declining ProfitsEven Stannah Stairlifts, whose name is synonymous with its product, is not immune from competitive pressures. Despite being the world leader in stairlifts since 1985, a Company graph produced in May 1999, (which became known simply as “the Graph,”) showed return on sales at a quarter of its 1994 high and still falling. The implications...
Continuous ImprovementA major bulk plastics manufacturing company with over 20 plants across Europe was seeking to improve capital efficiency and grow capacity without major capital investment. It had already recognised the need for a consistent measure of asset performance across its plants, but lacked an effective improvement capability that would deliver continuous and...
