GPAllied’s R⁵ Approach

Increased plant capacity, reduced maintenance and operating costs, and enhanced organizational skills and discipline – this is what our clients realize when they choose to deploy GPAllied’s aggressive R⁵apid Improvement Process. The R⁵ methodology enables the systematic anchoring of changes within your organization. Similar to, and designed after, the Six Sigma DMAIC process, R⁵ is universally applicable as a problem solving methodology. As with the DMAIC process, R⁵ can be applied horizontally to any tactical deployment effort, such as designing asset health strategies using the RCM Blitz^TM process. However, R⁵ extends beyond the capabilities of DMAIC in execution and sustainability. The R⁵apid Improvement Process creates a framework for multi-tier deployments to ensure sufficient leadership alignment, employee engagement, and organizational change management in support of tactical improvements.

Read This: GPAllied R⁵ Executive Overview

Speed of Adoption

The rate of improvement is directly related to the speed at which your organization matures. Maturity, in this context, refers to the philosophy, behaviors, and habitual practices of the organization. It is not about how quickly you can implement solutions. The focus, instead, should be on how fast your organization can learn new concepts and apply those concepts in the form of behaviors and day-to-day practices.

We believe that the key to increasing the speed of adoption is through stakeholder and employee engagement. The R⁵ strategic deployment model is designed to take stakeholders and employees through five phases of maturity, each phase building advocacy for the change and creating ownership in the improvement path forward. The five phases are:

1. Awareness – people know why the change is necessary
2. Understanding – people know what is changing and how it will affect them
3. Acceptance – people have made a personal choice to change
4. Commitment – people take action to execute the change
5. Advocacy – people reinforce the change for sustainability

Repeatability

What makes the Six Sigma DMAIC model so effective is the organization’s ability to replicate the improvement process when new opportunities arrive. Having a repeatable structure for improvement and certified “black belts” on staff to facilitate and mentor others through the process reduces the time it takes to realize benefits.  We believe the R⁵ model should be repeatable at both the strategic and tactical levels. Our process, similar to the Six Sigma DMAIC model, provides the necessary structure to Recognize the problem needing to be solved; Rationalize the list of constraints, losses, and causes of suboptimal performance; and Ratify the improvement charter in order to ensure the appropriate level of organizational commitment towards executing the changes identified in the Resolve phase. This is where the problem is fully analyzed, improvement tools are selected, and the master improvement plan is designed. The rubber meets the road during the final phase of the improvement process. Action plans are carried out, performance is measured, and benefits are Realized within 90 to 180 days of commissioning the master plan.

Built-in Sustainability

Any improvement worth implementing is worth sustaining. So many organizations declare victory too soon and fail to realize the full, long-term potential of their improvement process. Sustainability is not a “nice to have”; it is a “need to have”. In order to sustain the gains, your improvement process must include skill and competency development, reinforcing systems, and a transition strategy that proactively defines how the organization will continue to grow and mature.

We believe that sustainability must be inherent within improvement methodology. As a result, we have built sustainability into our R⁵ model. Through the strategic deployment framework, leadership competencies in organizational change leadership are developed, performance management systems are implemented, and a formal transition strategy is defined to ensure long-term benefit realization. Additionally, through iReliability™, the R⁵ model provides a blended learning solution to build core skills and competencies within your organization to ensure techniques and disciplines are consistently executed for years to come.

Customizability

When beginning your improvement journey, it is important to select the improvement methodology that best suits the problem needing to be resolved. It is not a “one size fits all” proposition.

We believe in selecting the right tool for the job, and that is why the R⁵ Improvement Process is fully customizable. R⁵ provides the framework for process improvement, launching capital projects and engineering asset management strategies for 6σ performance. The R⁵ Improvement Process is multi-dimensional and can be applied at the strategic level to aid in cultural transformation, as well as at the tactical level. R⁵ can also be applied to core skills development in order to increase the sustainability of your improvement process.