The position title was Deputy Senior Systems Engineer. The organization was the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. The assignment was to conduct a systems analysis of the various production systems, with the idea of recommending implementable changes. The goal was to determine the areas in which costs could be reduced, customer relations could be improved, and overall efficiency could be heightened.
The best way to achieve these goals was to recruit a team of professionals from the various departments and set about motivating them into a cohesive and cogent unit. Constantly maintaining focus, and guaranteeing all team members that their input and suggestions were critical for the achievement of the goals did this.
The first challenge, concerning these goals, was to put them into a more concrete problem statement. Group consensus developed this problem statement: "To reduce the completion time of all the 33kV Cable Laying Works from more than six months to four months." This problem statement was specific, positive and measurable.
Armed with this problem statement, focused brainstorming sessions were held, with team members calling upon past experiences to help focus the real situations. These observations and recollections were illustrated by Cause and Effect diagrams to help focus the issues. This process enabled our team to identify the root causes and tabulate them in a root cause evaluation matrix.
The identification of the causes then enabled suggested alternative remedies. Some of the remedies, naturally, had organizational barriers that had to be overcome, a challenge that was greatly reduced by the evaluation matrix.
Once the suggested alternatives to the status quo were implemented, the engineers on the team performed thorough tracking and follow up, and adjustments were made when necessary.
The improvement process was carefully analyzed at the end of the test period, and the results wer...