I’ve moved on from my role as Divisional Manager – Treco Garden Sheds at Oldfields Holdings Limited. At the end of my two year contract and am very happy with the results we achieved. The Directors’ Operations Review in the Preliminary Final Report to the Australian Stock Exchange for the year ended 30 June 2008 says:
Treco Garden Sheds
The Garden Sheds division performed well. This business is a solid contributor to the Group. This was assisted by the division’s management focus on better manufacturing efficiency. The company congratulates the Management for their Group contribution.
I’d like to thank my team at Treco for all their hard work and support over the last two years. Without them it wouldn’t have been possible to make record divisional EBIT in each of those two years. Thanks to Ian C, George D, Les J, Mario A, as well as my fellow ex-Treco’s Susan R and Brett C.
In manufacturing, I’d like to thank the production team: Tan Dat Ho, Minh, Frank, Ted, Ho, Tan Dat Ha, Suri, Michael T, Noelene, Toni, Neil, Mark, Maurice, Micko, Mick C, and Gabriel.
What did we do?
- Focused on low hanging fruit, grab what orders we could without huge retooling.
- De-hassle the workflow. We spent time and effort removing obstacles from our processes.
- Use subject matter experts. I didn’t tell them what or how to do it, I set the goal and trusted them to find a way. Then I cheered from the sidelines. This worked for both sales and manufacturing experts
- Use common sense. Just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean we should still do it. Everyone can ask “why are we doing this?”
I will do a personal WWW/TALA on this over the next month (What Went Well/Take A Look At). Manager Tools podcast by Mike Horstman and Mike Auzenne taught me that acronym.
Anyway on the the next challenge which is with a fast growth firm. More later.
