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Karl Storz Singapore

KARL STORZ is a German, family company, a global manufacturer and distributor of endoscopes, medical instruments, and devices.

Their range of endoscopic instruments for human medicine, veterinary medicine, and industrial endoscopy includes more than 15,000 products. The most recent KARL STORZ developments are in digital documentation systems and comprehensive operating room concepts. As a system supplier, the company combines its expertise in endoscopy with software solutions to achieve integration in the operating room and to support clinical process and resource management.

In Singapore, KARL STORZ offers quality endoscopy products for use in human medicine as well as in veterinary medicine and industrial endoscopy.

WHY

The management of the KARL STORZ Singapore entity recognized the need for bringing in greater focus towards serving their Singapore customer base and for aligning the sales, service and operations processes.It was realized that, as the Singapore business has grown, the company is increasingly experiencing process disconnects and silo behaviour across Sales, Operations and Customer Service Functions. Such disconnects were having an adverse impact onCustomer Satisfaction, Brand Reputation, Inter departmental tension, Employee Morale, Process Inefficiencies, andProcess Rigidities.

HOW

An Operational Excellence Engagement Project was conceived and ValueQwest engaged as the consultants to help address the above challenges by

  • Redesigning existing processes, if required
  • Remove process disconnects to ensure better process flow
  • Make the Sales, Service and Operations processes more demand driven, focused towards meeting the needs of the customer

WHAT

Using the classic ‘DMAIC’ (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) methodology of continuous improvement, we executed the project covering the following areas.

  • Business process reengineering and improvement exercise
    • Mapping of AS-IS process
    • Analysis of AS-IS process to identify issues & challenges in mapped processes
    • Ideas for process improvement
    • Design and Implementation of TO-BE process to improve customer satisfaction
  • Following customer facing processes in Sales, Service & Operations were covered in the exercise
    • Sales: New Product Sales, Existing Product Sales, Tendering, Quotation, Mediset Delivery
    • Service: Breakdown service, Preventive Maintenance, Quotation, Delivery, Loaner, Installation & Commissioning
    • Operations: PO Quotation Matching, HQ Procurement, HQ Confirmation, HQ Delivery, Customer Delivery, Trade-in-Process, Repair-Exchange, Demonstration, Inventory control, Billing, Collections

Over multiple rounds of workshops with the functional area team members, validation and prioritization of the improvement ideas with the process champions and the steering committee, detailed To-Be Process design was developed along with the detailed Implementation Plan.

The project has been acknowledged as an extremely useful engagement by all key stakeholders. In the words of the Managing Director of Singapore and Asia at Karl Storz – Thank you very much for your good work and your efforts to keep us on track. It’s much appreciated”.