Problem

This supplier of luxury clockwork products had to cope with a chronic lack of responsiveness in the marketing of its new products. The catalogue is rich and the models manufactured in exclusive series.

The problem to be resolved was to reduce by 50% the production time between the creator’s design and the market launch of a product certified according to Swiss watchmaking standards.

How to achieve such a goal was very important, since several past changes and reorganizations had not produced the desired results.

Solution

From interviews with members of the management team, it became clear that we needed to involve employees and change the way to think about production. This new approach would make it possible to build something sustainable.

We used the “Quick Response” approach, inspired by the QRM (Quick Response Manufacturing) methodology. The latter is based on an approach aimed at one element above all: motion time. The hunt for "white space" (unnecessary time for the client) was opened and a cell organization was tested. The new organization is based on the full empowerment of a multi-skilled team and the radical evolution of the executive’s role as a "team coach."