Conference Delivering Sustainable Value through Implementation of Operational Excellence Manufacturing Programmes

The Second International Conference Delivering Sustainable Value through Implementation of Operational Excellence Manufacturing Programmes was held in Kyiv on 12 -14 December 2017. The event was organised by BPI-Group in partnership with Kyivstar, P&G and DTEK Energo. For the second year running, PwC Academy Ukraine acted as an initiator and an organiser of the conference.

The first conference, held in 2016 to great acclaim, became an unprecedented event for Ukrainian companies looking to improve their manufacturing practices and enhance their productivity. The event made an important contribution to promotion of best practice management techniques in manufacturing and provided new, much-needed momentum to industry consolidation and experience sharing. On many occasions, industry players had stressed the importance of establishing a single forum to discuss best practices.

The 2017 event brought together even more business representatives, with 235 participants representing 90 leading Ukrainian companies attending and 28 leading global experts from 7 countries speaking.

On the first conference day, a roundtable talk was held to discuss establishment of a professional community bringing together operational excellence leaders in Ukraine. The PwC Ukraine office was visited by Ukrainian business and leading global experts. These included John Shook, a founder of Lean philosophy currently representing Lean Enterprise Institute. He was among the first who managed to transfer the Japanese lean manufacturing culture to American business.

Kyivstar’s Olga Ostroverkhova, one of the conference attendees, believes there is no one-fits-all ready-to-use recipe. “It is important for each company to distil its own value from the lean manufacturing culture. Only when it endorses, accepts and learns how to follow it, will the company be able to achieve success”, she comments.

Awareness is just as important here, adds Sergei Verminsky, owner and CEO of Snite. “Lean manufacturing principles should be promoted, in particular, through professional communities”, he comments. “As many people as possible should find out about the lean manufacturing culture by hearing about success stories, and this required tremendous effort”. Sergei says that seven years ago, an industry association came up with a Kaizen club initiative. This time has been filled with clarifications, lectures and site visits to both local and international businesses.

One of the main conference day speeches was delivered by Olga Andrienko-Bentz, Director, Strategy and Operations, PwC Ukraine. She suggested practical ideas of how to best present Lean implementation programme to senior management taking into account the role of Lean philosophy in performance improvement.

Regrettably, it is still quite common for Ukrainian businesses to focus on short-term financial performance. This approach is driven by the lack of stability in the country's socio-economic environment. Business leaders are not always prepared to invest in long-term development. “No one is prepared to wait ten years for personnel to learn. This, however, is what it is all about. Developing talent, while time and effort intensive, should be the first priority”, — says Grigory Berdnikov, Head of Operational Excellence, DTEK Energo.

Lean is indeed a complex methodology, both in terms of its application and right implementation. Sergei Bulavin, First Vice-Present, Agrogeneration, says it takes significant effort from management and staff alike.  “Improvements often require long hours and increased work burden on people. This is hard to organise. Such implementation takes extra high motivation”, – he comments.

Establishment of a single communication platform will promote not only awareness of tools required but also knowledge and experience sharing. “I believe it should be a self-governing organisation whose role, in addition to raising awareness of manufacturing process management best practices, could be delivering other benefits to its members such as certification and training”, says Sergei Bulavin.

“A single platform is definitely needed by all. Currently Ukrainian companies have very different capabilities and understanding of performance of each organisation. Events such as this one help us respond to our own question: where am I in relation to others and am I moving in the right direction?”, –agrees Olga Ostroverkhova.

Another important factor is facilitating international cooperation, which on many levels is still quite elementary. Andrey Sergeiev, Partner of BPI Group, one of the conference organisers, believes that Ukrainian success stories recognised and discussed at the global level could help promote Lean principles. “Lean has a huge potential in Ukraine. By working together, we will unlock and expand this potential”, says Andrey.

The right tool set spans all industries and core businesses. For example, the conference was attended by both service providers and manufacturing companies. These included representatives of FMCG, financial services and consulting, media and telecommunication, retail and logistics, heavy industry and agribusiness. Sergei Bulavin believes that the way manufacturing cycle is structured can be the only differentiating factor. The shorter it is, the easier it will be to implement change. Instead, longer manufacturing cycles prevent instantly visible results and require high self-motivation. And it is the human factor that is the core driver of Lean.

For two years running, Leanforum.org provides a unique opportunity to Ukrainian business to share knowledge and best practices, making an important contribution to the positive trend. The event programme is always designed with level of knowledge and interests of all attendees in mind.

PwC Academy Ukraine will continue to actively promote lean manufacturing culture in Ukraine.