Earned-hour productivity increases 33%.
Required staff levels are reduced by 20%.


Strategic Intent

Client’s five-year strategic plan calls for significantly increased productivity – to keep costs flat by not filling retiree vacancies.


Situation

  • Large power generation company operates facilities throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico and Australia
  • CEO focused on increasing long-term shareholder value
  • Deregulation creates imbalance between service levels and costs
  • More efficient operations critical to corporate goal attainment
  • Nearly half of hydro workforce (in 13 plants) eligible for retirement in next five years
  • Succession planning is a major management concern

Issues and Barriers

  • Operations driven by old culture and reactive management processes
  • Supervisors not setting clear employee expectations
  • Large variances between planned and actual work activities
  • Excessive overtime managed ineffectively
  • No record of preventive maintenance frequencies
  • Work planning and scheduling based on inaccurate or outdated standards

Key Implementations

  • Redesign of all critical processes, including barrier-free standards, overtime and dispatching controls
  • Supervisory systems and controls for field foremen, including field audits, management reporting and continuous improvement tools
  • Expert models that clearly define roles and responsibilities, with special emphasis on foremen’s tasks
  • Accurate methodology to determine crew size requirements

Results

Productivity Improvements (Earned Hours vs. Work Hours)

U-CS3

With project completion, CEO is one step closer to five-year goal. Results include:

  • Earned hour productivity increases by 33%
  • Required staff levels reduced by 20%
  • Revised standards to average correction factor of 45%
  • Creation of “stress-free environment” for hydro operations manager

Client Perspective

Brooks met all of their commitments. They did a great job of helping our managers achieve a significant productivity improvement.
— General Manager, Hydro Operations


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