Located in France, Saint-Étienne’s Meritor’s plant designs and manufactures axles and transmission components for road and off-road vehicles.
To support its management structure and operations control performance, Meritor’s management team decided to digitize its daily management system with Tervene.
The project’s objectives
✓ Set up an operational control structure for team leaders and workshop managers
✓ Structure communication and problem escalation between teams and departments that are in daily contact with production
✓ Improve problem-solving
✓ Allow better prioritization of daily actions
Deploying digital management practices with Tervene
Gemba walks and operational control
Team leaders now realize daily Gemba walks into the machining and assembly departments with the new floor control structure. This daily control allows a proactive validation of operations since production issues or deviations from standards are identified right away. Once the Gemba walk is over, the identified problems are immediately taken care of or escalated in the appropriate operational meeting with the support services to determine the necessary corrective actions.
Since Tervene’s arrival, more than 1000 Gemba walks have been completed by managers. On average, each Gemba allows one to identify two deviations or opportunities for improvement. So far, 94% of the raised deviations are resolved or adequately addressed.
As mentioned by Charles Bommersbach, support services and continuous improvement manager at Meritor, “Digital Gemba walks have made it possible to structure and document information on the field and reduce the loss of information that could have previously been lost with traditional methods such as paper notes. Now, nothing is forgotten.”
Audits & Inspections
Thanks to the digital audit functionality, team leaders and production support departments now use a tablet or laptop to do their audits. They can document questions on the digital forms by entering information and taking photos. If the validation criteria for a question are not met, the system creates and documents a noncompliance. After completing the audit, corrective actions are assigned to the various support services to deal with the noncompliances. It allowed the organization to eliminate the transcription of information related to the data valuation while also simplifying the monitoring and progress of corrective actions.
Team leaders used to conduct audits on paper. Now, it’s easier to access information, assign tasks resulting from audits, and make follow-ups.
Thierry Bayle, Machining sector Manager at Meritor
Eventually, it is planned to add new audits to the system, such as product type audits, HSE, quality, methods, production, etc. Therefore, teams from various departments will be able to continually carry out their audits to improve their compliance with Meritor’s standards.
Communication and meetings’ structure
The organization has set up several operational meetings in Tervene’s meetings module to ensure smooth communication between operations and support services. Meetings contributors can now prepare in advance by viewing the agenda, taking notice of the discussion points, and adding their own if needed.
Among the twenty digitized recurring meetings with Tervene, Meritor’s team has, among others, structured:
- A daily meeting in the assembly and machining department.
- A weekly meeting in the assembly sector which brings together the three heads of the quality, production, and methods departments.
- A weekly meeting that brings together the production and quality departments to discuss quality issues related to common suppliers.
- A monthly meeting that reunites, by sub-sector, assembly operators and their supervisors, quality, and methods to address the important monthly information.
When leading a meeting, the manager covers all the agenda’s discussion points and, if necessary, assigns tasks or actions to collaborators through the platform. This collaboration allows a quick resolution of operational issues.
Tervene brought dynamism to our meetings. It feeds the exchanges with photos and documentation, making it more concrete. It also allows us to monitor certain sectors, in particular, to follow up on emergencies and to better prioritize the daily actions with the sector managers.
Tasks and corrective actions
Assigning tasks and corrective actions used to be a challenge for the organization. Previously, it was often done orally or by e-mail communication. These methods often caused many tasks to fall into oblivion, thus making it difficult to follow up on the progress of the said tasks.
With Tervene’s tasks module, machining, assembly, and support groups teams (methods, quality, maintenance) now receive tasks in real-time through the platform. These tasks contain all the information regarding a problem from its root cause and the history of any previous actions taken to solve it.
In brief, the task management tool has improved the visibility and resolution time of corrective actions. Meritor’s management now clearly notices an improvement in the collaboration between operations and the various support services.L’attribution de tâches et d’actions correctives était auparavant un défi pour l’organisation. Auparavant, elle était souvent faite de façon orale ou par l’envoi de courriel. Cela avait pour impact que plusieurs actions tombaient dans l’oubli et qu’il était difficile de faire un suivi de l’avancement des tâches.
We would never go back. In terms of organization, some things did not exist before, and Tervene helped implement and structure them.
About Tervene
Our daily management system empowers frontline teams and top management to reach operational excellence with stronger daily control, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and improvement processes.
Manufacturers, operation leaders, and many SMBs digitized their management practices with our help: Gemba walks, daily checks, audits, inspections, operational meetings, digital procedures, improvement management, and much more.
