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Case Studies
Key Achievements
- There were points raised at the meeting and we have amended our delivery tickets and tray schedules as additional double checks of work being booked in and loads being dispatched. These checks are only in the early stages but we feel they compliment our present system. We have also decided to carry out a check against invoices to stone summaries on past projects and, although this will incur a lot of work and time, if we are to ensure we are making money and meeting our customers’ needs we need to do this.
- At the immediate stage although there are no financial benefits to be seen straightaway, within the next 18 months we will definitely hope to pick up any flaws in our invoicing/project evaluation procedures which will highlight any financial gains to be had and eliminate any errors.
Albion Stone Plc
The Portland factory is one of the largest and most productive masonry works in the UK. It produces a range of slabs, ashlar panels for cladding and internal wall lining and pavers & tiles for flooring as well as the most intricate masonry for high profile, restoration projects.
Background
Albion Stone has long mineral extraction leases covering all the Crown Estate's Stone reserves on Portland. These mines and quarries yield a full range of Portland Stones; Roach, Whitbed and Basebed.
The dimensioned block extraction processes have been refined over recent years. Explosives have been replaced with the most environmentally sensitive extraction processes in the UK stone industry.
Scope
We were approached by SWMAS with an idea to look at the processes we have within our business and see whether there is any way we can look at what we are doing as a business, and if we can change any processes within our system. We had recently reviewed our system internally, but felt that an outsiders view and advice could only be of benefit to us. We especially wanted to highlight our invoicing and end of project evaluation. We initially sent the SWMAS Specialist a list of our processes in the form of a flow-chart, this helped enable the specialist to have an understanding of how we work.
Method
The SWMAS Specialist held a “mapping” session with some of our employees, during this session we looked at how we presently carry out each process, although this took some time and involved plenty of post-it notes we eventually had a map of our processes. We were then able to look at possible flaws in our system and areas in which we may need more work.
During the time we had between our next visit from the SWMAS specialist we looked at the map ourselves and discussed where we could improve/eliminate/substitute procedures, overall we were very happy with our system but some suggestions were made and these were highlighted at the next meeting with SWMAS. The focus was on the invoicing of projects, in reality we only touched upon this in our mapping sessions. We also decided that we can use our customer questionnaires as a focal point for receiving feedback from customers in relation to the way in which we set out our paperwork including invoicing.
No. Employees: n/a
Location: Portland, Dorset - Dorset
Date: March 2009
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