mbd  SUCCESS STORIES

 

mbd Partners have demonstrated their expertise leading organizations through the application of Quality Management discipline, including Six Sigma methods and statistical tools, to drive significant improvements in business performance and bottom-line results. Five success stories are summarized below.


Process Improvement
Management System Evaluation
Cost of Quality Analysis
System Design and Implementation
Management Training and Coaching


Process Improvement


mbd's facilitated Self-Analysis can help the client identify the current state of their business and identify gaps between their current level of performance and world class or other target.

mbd will identify and prioritize improvement opportunities and structure improvement projects in those areas. These projects may employ tools such as Six Sigma and the application of Quality Management discipline.
Often clients need help in a very specific area of their business. Here are three examples:
  • mbd created a New Product Development System that shortened the product development cycle for a nationwide marketer from over 12 months to less than 3 months.
  • mbd helped streamlined the Customer Problem Resolution process for a major New England bank, improving their response time for customer inquiries and directly increasing customer satisfaction.
  • mbd helped a metal fabrication company develop a system of improved work instructions and operator training. mbd also helped the company secure two separate workforce training grants from the state of Massachusetts to fund part of the training.

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Management System Evaluation


Successful businesses are built on the framework of a systematic approach to management. New problems come up all the time - that is the nature of management. The trick is to identify them quickly, solve them efficiently and keep them from recurring. mbd excels at quickly identifying areas for improvement that bring the most bang for the buck.

Case study: A newly formed health care billing organization was created from parts of three other organizations.

Issue: Lack of integration of the organizational components and duplication of functions across the organization.

Solution: A major organizational development analysis and detailed improvement plan.

Results:
  • Detailed process maps of over 40 operational processes gave management a complete picture of the opportunities for productivity improvement.
  • Identified over $100mm in targeted cost savings.
  • Potential 50% productivity boost mapped out.
  • Provided a detailed list of over fifty specific actions to achieve these results.
  • Provided specific project plans with timing, milestones and expected benefits.


Case study: Core erosion for a market leader.

Issue: The dominant player in an evolving consumer market faced increasing competition and losing share.

Solution: A structured review of the management system identified gaps, overlaps and blind spots and was used to re-engineer many key processes.

Results:
  • Cycle times for key processes shrank
  • Caller dissatisfaction declined from 4% to less than 1%
  • Account growth went from negative to a sustained 2.5% per quarter


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Cost of Quality Analysis

Cost of Quality is the single best analytical tool to allow a business to identify areas of weakness and bottom line opportunity; whether done as a stand-alone program, to support a Six Sigma initiative or coupled to a management system evaluation, Cost of Quality puts a management team in charge of its destiny. mbd has evaluated the Cost of Quality for Fortune 50 companies in Finance, Transportation, Services and Manufacturing

Case Study: A national mortgage company was losing money despite a market boom.

Issues: High processing costs, runoff, inability to manage volume, and declining revenue in an expanding market

Solution: A thorough Cost of Quality analysis revealed and put a price tag on numerous process deficiencies. Some examples:
  • an excessive number of processing hand-offs,
  • frequent underwriting rework,
  • a huge and costly closed loan inventory,
  • decision times that extended beyond the lock-in period, and
  • call abandon rates 3X industry average.

Results: By the second year of the effort, which included redesigned processes based on Cost of Quality deficiencies, savings exceeded $150mm and revenues were growing faster than the industry average.

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System Design and Implementation

Like any other vital part of business, the management system should be designed and not just allowed to happen. As our name says, managementbydesign is the expert in the design of management systems.

Case study: 300 Branch consumer bank in a crowded market.

Issue: Growth through innovation.

Solution: Major management processes were redesigned.
  1. A major process, "Branch Effectiveness" was deployed to measure and continuously improve all branch activities through success transfer/best practices and refined MIS.
  2. A second set of processes was developed around product development and project management.

The new system greatly improved management's ability to identify, prioritize and provide resources to develop promising new products and services.

Results: Vastly improved and streamlined communication between centralized operations and the branches meant an improved ability to analyze the data coming from the marketplace. This in turn meant faster reaction to marketplace changes and a far better ability to place needed information in the hands of the branch personnel and product developers. The story was not technology, but management of what information was needed, how it was to be delivered, and how it was to be used. Better management led to greater return on investment, a shorter development cycle and improved targeting. These, in turn, led to account growth and the positioning of the client as a market leader. Not necessarily the biggest, but the one who set the tone in the marketplace.


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Management Training and Coaching

The heart of the management system is, of course, the manager. An essential part of mbd's work is to develop the people skills and analytical skills for the management team.

Almost invariably, the men and women we have coached have gone on to greater and greater responsibilities as their careers prospered along with their businesses.

We offer training in Six Sigma, Leadership and Change Management, Project Management, Strategic Planning, and Team Building and Problem Solving. We typically design the course around the specific needs of the client.

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Contact mbd to learn more.


managementbydesign
542 Plunkett Road, Washington, MA 01223
(413) 655-4519

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