A local authority planning department was experiencing increasing demands on the time of their planners. End to end times for deciding planning applications were extending, backlog of applications were increasing, customers calling to progress chase applications were rising and complaints to elected members and the chief executive from customers, agents and architects were taking a sharp rise. Amongst the time it was taking to progress applications and make decisions, they were also questioning the quality of some of the decisions themselves.

All of the issues raised above relate to the quality of the customer experience.

An engineering depot we have worked with specialized in the routine maintenance and repair of aircraft modular components. They struggled to keep up with their customers demands and were continually firefighting problems, supply chain issues and customer complaints which led to the constant “prioritizing” of work by management. This led to a chaotic work system in the precision engineering environment, jobs in vary states of repair littering the facility and a thoroughly demoralized workforce. As a business though they were in a very strong position as they provided a unique service in the market place and their customers had no option to take their business elsewhere. The whole organization had become attuned to reacting to which customer shouted the loudest and had lost sight of needs of their customers as a whole. They had also become complacent to the level of service they provided and the clever thinking was that sooner rather than later another engineering service provider would see an opportunity to re tool and take the customers away.

A high volume Tier 1 automotive supplier we were working with, was struggling to meet its customers' demands for its products, both in terms of volume and mix. These demands varied greatly and were usually received in response to a problem at the OEM assembly plant. The parts our clients made were complex precision pieces that contained over a hundred individual piece parts all of which had a corresponding supply chain attached. The shock waves caused by the priority changes at the OEM were affecting the whole chain.