By: Francisco Dávila and Mauricio Dávila, Third Generation
Through good fortune, our integration into DAABON Group coincided with the planne start of a company-wide improvement project, named OPTIMUS, with the London Consulting Group (LCG). Working on this project allowed us to comprehensively understand the different and complex processes that take place in the day-to-day operations across the various companies in the Group.
In the “diagnosis” stage, we worked hand in hand with
the
consultants to support them with the information they needed,
while they taught
us their methodologies and perceptions of opportunities for
improvement. At the
end of this stage, we realized that what we knew was just the
tip of the
iceberg. It was only during the next stage, the “execution”
stage of the
project, that we really got to know the details of Group.
Mauricio: I began working with a focus on our
logistical
operations, where I was able to learn about the movement of oil
between our
farms, our factories and the market. I focused on the loading
and unloading
areas where, with the help of our collaborators, we were able to
identify
opportunities to reduce processing times. Implementing some
small improvements
and reaffirming. the importance of our Fasturn platforms, we now
get more out
of the logistical areas of the industrial cluster. Likewise, we
reengineered
processes to reduce redundancies and make operations more fluid.
After my time in logistical operations, I joined the
new
planning area, where I got to learn more about the supply,
production, and
maintenance processes. Together with the LCG team, we managed to
fine-tune a
number of working models to optimize our operations and improve
best practices
for the company. Lastly, key performance indicators were defined
to help us
self-assess and take better advantage of areas of opportunity.
Francisco: For my part,
I focused on our purchasing department, learning the
functions of our team in order to achieve and ensure timely
supply. With the
support of the purchasing team I was able to learn about the
internal processes
that are carried out every day to achieve adequate
efficiency in our operations, ensuring the availability of
supplies,
materials and services to meet customer orders. During the
OPTIMUS project, we
implemented a number of different indicators to monitor
inventory levels, use
of materials, internal customer service times and compliance
with our
suppliers.
With these indicators in place we were able to identify opportunities for the optimization of resources in our inventories and the development of tools that facilitate determining the requirements for different materials in our operations. Additionally, adjustments were made to current indicators and procedures, such as our evaluations of suppliers and the way we identify price variations in all our centres.