An Interview with Think Perform Course Participant Steven Allender

  1. How many and which of your staff went through a Think Perform program?

    87 people have enrolled in the course, the people were from all areas of our business. Sales, Finance, Customer Service, Scheduling and all Operational roles.

  2. What were the details of the program?

    It is a 15 month program and is being run from the region’s main production and distribution plant at Lyndhurst. The program is a business wide improvement program named Project Advantage.

  3. What made you decide to engage Think Perform?

    Think Perform program leader Darrel North was the facilitator of the Horizon program at our Western Port plant, I was lucky enough to be given a tour of the plant whilst that was being rolled out and had the opportunity to extend an invitation for Darrel to visit our site at Lyndhurst. His knowledge of operational excellence is exciting and contagious, that combined with having knowledge of our business made the decision to engage Think Perform really easy.

  4. What challenges did you/your people face when learning/applying Think Perform teachings?

    The main challenge is managing the change of behavior of myself and my leadership. The program clearly and succinctly delivers the tools to help us make improvements in our plant, but this just can’t be a fad/program, this has to be a way of life moving forward.

  5. What were the highlights/best bits of the program?

    Biggest highlight: total site engagement in the program, this has been enlightening for all areas of the business as we have worked through our process maps and have been given an appreciation of what other departments do to satisfy our business needs and customers’ requirements. This extended not only from sales to operations but operations to sales.

  6. What were the results of the program?

    The program has helped the site break down barriers across all departments within our business. One of the main objectives was to help us change our internal culture and we are slowly improving in this area, an example of this is CI Wednesday’s – on Wednesdays all shifts have agreed to stay back for 10minutes for a combined CI discussion with the incoming shift which is breaking down shift on shift barriers.

  7. Would you recommend Think Perform to other companies?

    Definitely!!