Al Dhafra Paper Manufacturing chooses PRESTO Digital Enterprise to increase shop floor collaboration in chronic issue resolution, KPI digitisation & change management

LET’S ALL GET INSPIRED, LET’S TAKE AN ACTION’ – The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. So, let’s get together and safeguard our environment. Join us today to nurture our nature.

This is the slogan continuously promoted at Al Dhafra Paper Manufacturing Company in its daily effort to keep the UAE’s environment neat and clean adding value to waste. Supporting a world with an industry wherein paper production is less reliant on virgin fibre and forest products and more on the use of recycled waste paper to produce containerboard benefiting the country in particular and the world at large in terms of reduction in carbon footprints.

Since 2017, the Al Dhafra Paper Manufacturing Company has been converting waste paper into recycled test liner and fluting medium to cater to the packaging industry in the UAE and internationally. It produces 650 tons of recycled paper daily and is fully accredited to the highest standards of environmental and technical safety, and is regularly updated to stay on par with the cutting edge of technology.

Having digital transformation on the top of its agenda and looking to teach ‘Lean’ methodologies amongst the staff, ADPMCL chose PRESTO Digital Enterprise to manage daily shop floor challenges and install an enriched sense of urgency amongst their staff to optimise performance

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Core objectives

1. Inculcate Lean and Kaizen – based thinking at all levels of the organisation
2. Create sense of urgency, sense of ownership and sense of purpose
3. Create a non-confrontational continuous improvement culture where issues, problems, and their related wastes are visible
4. Reduce time dedicated by stakeholders to excessive documentation, paperwork and communication
5. Solve problems at the seed level and attack waste by taking action before the problem becomes chronic
6. Provide increased visibility into the roles and responsibilities needed at the team level and communicate expectations more efficiently to the staff and their leaders

Additional opportunities (customisations)

1. Integrate the PRESTO newsfeed into the Al Dhafra issue management logic allowing for a company-wide platform to be available to identify and resolve operational issues in a more structured and efficient manner via the transparency offered by the social media platform
2. Use PRESTO Digital Transformation’s KPI module to provide long-term support to Al Dhafra’s core managerial reporting
3. Identify additional areas and methodologies of Lean Six Sigma available in PRESTO Digital Transformation’s functional suite which could bring value to Al Dhafra’s operational excellence leaders and staff

Immediate results

With a little effort and the help of a small internal core project team, PRESTO was up-an-running in a few short days due to its user-friendly interface which the staff were easily able to learn in a 2-hour training course provided by the Project Manager. In less than 3 months:

25 hours per week saved on administrative activities 158 issues were opened 920 actions / tasks were identified 74 issues were closed 531 actions / tasks were complete 84 teams were setup with corresponding roles and responsibilities 641 employees were assigned roles and responsibilities 100+ PRESTO super users were created 100+ logins per day

The PRESTO value proposition

Disrupting the shop floor

Offering a direct link to the issue storyboard kanban and task list, managers and problem solvers at all levels found the issue management newsfeed a quick and easy way to take a few minutes to scroll through activities underway, review outstanding task lists, share suggestions and best practices via commenting, and stay up-to-date with all issue-related activity

Building something new

together with the ADPMCL business leaders, we designed and built the PRESTO multi-view project management kanban allowing users to toggle from the traditional project view to our multi-phase storyboard listing all open issues by status and owner. Super filter capabilities were also designed allowing users to locate issues and tasks by owners, level of involvement (RACI), period of activity, status, favourites, benefit types and much more

Agreeing to perform with R-A-C-I

In a short few weeks, the entire set of Al Dhafra productivity KPIs were entered into PRESTO permanently changing the daily management team meeting’s approach to prioritisation of activities. Together with the ADPMCL team, the action plan task manager was built with automatic alert and email notifications sent to all RACI-involved parties to ensure increased sense of ownership and sense of urgency at all levels of the organisation

Complementary synergies

The senior management team at ADPMCL found immediate comfort in seeing all their shop floor issues neatly organised in front of them and sorted by category using PRESTO’s helicopter view display and super zoom function allowing users to navigate to any organisational level for information

As the installation progressed starting first in Business Operations and then expanding across Finance, Accounting, IT and Human Resources, PRESTO’s role and responsibility module became especially useful as the senior team began seeking more efficient ways to actively manage expectations amongst their staff by highlighting the roles and responsibilities assigned

Conclusion & results

In addition to numerical results, PRESTO offered an enhanced company-wide sense of urgency, sense of ownership, and sense of purpose discipline amongst ADPMCL staff equipping each with a wide set of problem-solving tools while embedding the fundamentals of Lean in daily operations. Faster decision making and prioritisation was achieved due to the greater visibility management had into the real-time issues which impact daily business operations. PRESTO’s fun and easy-to-use user interface fueled employee enthusiasm as the staff members began their PRESTO journey following its structured workflow rich in many of the modern day tool sets which are starting to become more common in business operations now that cloud-based collaboration technology is available. As the R-A-C-I logic began to become business-as-usual in day-to-day problem solving, so did the reduction of knowledge gaps amongst the staff as sense of ownership began to become more evident highlighting where cross-training efforts were the responsibility of the subject matter experts. By using PRESTO’s to archive issue management checklists created by the subject matter experts, know-how into problem resolution became captured and available to all digitally and offering the team a complete end-to-end digital transformation experience.