Making sense of opportunities in building material production

Abstract

Purpose

Breakthrough improvement requires management decisions, which indicates that making sense of existing opportunities is important. This is a particular challenge when the improvement is a possibility and not a problem. The purpose of this paper is to propose the practice of doing an Opportunity Study as the way to create a sense of management urgency for realising dormant possibilities.

Design/methodology/approach

A process-based Opportunity Study is presented consisting of a Diagnosing-Analysing-Solving (DAS) approach. Benchmarks are defined and compared with the actual performance resulting in a quantifiable improvement potential (D). Main causes are analysed (A), which leads to proposed solutions (S). The Opportunity Study practice is applied to a cement milling process, a cement plant and a supply network for cement-based building products.

Findings

Results indicate that applying DAS methodology highlights realisable opportunities in all of the studied cases. This seems to be a necessary, but not sufficient criterion to create a sense of urgency for facts based change.

Research limitations/implications

The results indicate that there is need for further research for looking at the process of sense making and to what extent facts alone can drive change initiatives.

Practical implications

Results indicate that by a simple review, focusing on what a system can do instead of which the problems are, valuable opportunities for improvement could be detected.

Originality/value

The paper highlights the value of focusing on opportunities.

Citation

Isaksson, R. (2015), "Making sense of opportunities in building material production", The TQM Journal, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 781-797. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-06-2015-0073