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Overcoming Digital Solution Deployment Challenges with Quality Coaching

Up to 70% to 95% of digital transformation solutions fail, often because they are pushed on workers rather than including them in the deployment processes.

“Humans, by default, fear what they don’t understand. The majority of your employees will reject new software, tools, apps, and processes, even if they will improve their lives, unless they are slowly, consistently educated,” says Dr. Corrie Block, an organizational behavior expert, in her Forbes article, 12 Reasons Your Digital Transformation Will Fail.

We agree. As a result, change management must be considered from Day 1 when leaders plan to deploy a new solution that requires sustained behavior change. Workers want to be part of the solution, not a problem to be addressed.

QAD Redzone understands this truth and pairs new customers with coaches for 90 days. Together, coaches and manufacturing teams seek to achieve five standard measurable Lean journey goals during a 90-day sprint. They:

1. Create a visual factory, which includes overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) measurements that all workers can see in real-time.
2. Coach operators and supervisors to adopt Lean production techniques and collaborative problem-solving skills.
3. Improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by at least eight points by the end of the sprint
4. Achieve cost savings of $500K+ for smaller factories and $1M+ for larger factories, as verified by their finance functions.
5. Sustain all gains made in the first 90 days and improve them moving forward.

Overcoming Change Resistance with QAD Redzone

This 90-day onboard timeframe is intentional. Supervisors and teams get the time to ask questions, learn new processes, overcome roadblocks, and win the day by delivering outstanding business results. Our coaches know that:

• Getting buy-in at all levels: QAD Redzone must win buy-in from executive sponsors, who fund the technology; supervisors, who will drive continuous improvement programs; and workers, who will suggest and make process enhancements.
  
  Gary Fraser, operational excellence lead coach at QAD Redzone, says:
  
  “A good coach needs to be able to speak the language of all different roles, teams, and levels of the organization. You need to be able to work with operators and show them how to use certain tools for them to do their jobs and solve problems as they occur. When you sit in the corner office, the conversation is different. You need to be able to show C-suite leaders how using solutions to improve processes will positively impact the bottom line.”
• Recognizing change is hard: Workers must move from using processes they know to adopting new standard work. As they do so, employees see how QAD Redzone solves production problems that harm throughput. That’s why our coaches focus on a key focus line: one that’s important to the business, so improved results are meaningful to management and workers. Manufacturers, on average, can achieve an overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) uplift of 14 points and boost productivity by 29%.
  
  “I love that moment when they realize they’ve fixed something that has been a problem for years within the plant. What a difference a small amount of time can make and how much money it can pay back,” says Grant Ford, Coaching Director, QAD Redzone.
• Addressing “what’s in it for me”: Workers want to advance and grow. QAD Redzone provides them with the tools they need to develop their careers.
  
  Workers can use digital skills matrices to develop skills their plant needs, lead QAD Redzone implementations, or move across business functions. As they get promoted, they can increase their salaries.
  
  Some of our customers also share cost savings with workers, increasing wages.
  
  Workers also benefit from optimizing processes, such as converting cumbersome paper-based quality records into easy-to-use digital processes. As a result, they’re more likely to go the extra mile for new initiatives. 
  
  “I love working with the people on the plant floor and seeing their personal growth through QAD Redzone,” says Juarez Jackson, Community Coach, QAD Redzone.
• Ensuring new behaviors stick: QAD Redzone offers a new way of working, with production data surfaced on overhead TVs and the opportunity to share ideas via Huddles or videos and chats on the app, and Kaizens for driving process improvements at scale. However, workers want to contribute ideas, and seeing them adopted creates a reinforcing mechanism for teams and individuals to continue strategizing how best to solve production problems.
  
  “To see a person who won’t even talk come into a Kaizen event and realize that they can actually make a difference, and then end up presenting that Kaizen output to the entire plant – that’s just huge for me to see a quiet person finally have a voice,” says Mike Myers, Operational Excellence Coach, QAD Redzone.
• Creating a culture of celebration: Supervisors are encouraged to offer workers high-fives and good catches in Huddles, town halls, and on the QAD Redzone app. And QAD Redzone hosts annual Community Awards to recognize the best of the best. As a result, teams strive to win the day – together.
  
  “QAD Redzone allows frontline workers to have dignity and pride in what they do and have fun at work. Conventional manufacturing has said that these things don’t work, but we’ve proven that it does work, and you can see that in our results,” says Mike Williams, Coaching Director, QAD Redzone.

QAD Redzone has a highly structured coaching program where master coaches train new hires and accompany them to early customer deployments. Our team also seeks to continually uplevel our skills so we can bring new capabilities to our customers.

Learn more about QAD Redzone coaching.