Helping a Water Utility improve service
CASE STUDY
Fixing leaks faster & dealing with waste more efficiently
Finding the problem
We completed an extensive diagnostic of both their Leakage Management processes and their Pollution Management Processes. We completed and end to end review of the entire processes, listening to customer calls through to resolution of the issue.
We spent time understanding how the work flows through the various departments and teams and spent time observing people completing every part of the process. From walking a territory with a Leakage Engineer through to joining their contractors digging up the road, repairing and resurfacing.
Building internal understanding
We walked the Leadership teams through the entire customer journey of 3 random customers to show the various touchpoints with each customer and the processes completed by Yorkshire Water. We identified failure demand, non value adding process steps, waste, poor process flows, unnecessary handoffs and ultimately, the key drivers for customer dissatisfaction.
We comprehensively analysed data to show the how the ‘average time to fix’ masked a huge proportion of customers who were receiving a sub-par performance and identified the key causes of these long lead times.
Developing an Improvement Strategy
From the very beginning, Yorkshire Water recognised that they needed to build the internal capability to drive continuous improvement in their organisation. In a heavily regulated environment, where OFWAT mandates an increasing level of performance each Assessment Management Period (AMP), it wasn’t enough to have external consultants come and improve performance.
They needed to be able to deliver improvements on their own – as part of business as usual activities.
Building an Internal Improvement Capability
We delivered Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training & certification to 30 colleagues, a further 15 colleagues were trained to Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification and collaborated with improvement teams to mentor and coach them through the delivery of opportunities uncovered in our diagnostics.
