The Delos Model
© The Delos Partnership 2009
The Delos Model provides an overview of the key operating elements for a company, and enables us to explore with clients where they can best achieve improvements in pursuit of achieving their organisation's goals. It is the basis of our assessment programme, and provides a structure for our educational, facilitation, coaching and team-building skills. We describe here the key elements of this model.
Vision
Every company needs to develop a Vision, and the clarity of that long-term vision will enable an organisation to provide clear focus for its employees, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders. Clearly it needs to be simple and easy to remember. Out test is "Do the employees of the organisation understand and work to your Vision? "
Strategy
That Vision in turn needs to be supported by a clear Strategy, which outlines how the vision will be achieved, focussing on its core Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within its' environment of Markets, Competitors, Technologies and Geographical spread. In particular this strategy needs to have clarity around its focus and direction, particularly with respect to its' strategic choices between Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy, and Product Leadership.
Prioritisation
Every business needs to make choices between competing priorities for resource. A Prioritisation process needs to be in place, in order to enable these choices to be made. We believe that this decision-making process is best managed through an Integrated Enterprise Planning (Advanced Sales and Operations Planning) process, which co-ordinates the activities of all of the functions or groups within the organisation. This process enables an effective monthly update of a company's local and global operational, financial and strategic plans, allowing it to gain control of the constantly changing external environment.
Hence we see that an organisation needs its decision-making to be supported by a series of highly effective processes, which will be managed and co-ordinated to deliver the companies vision, strategy and goals. These process are grouped under the headings of :
Demand
- where we group all of the activities relating to the Demand on the organisation from Customers. This will include - for instance - ensuring there is an effective way of integrating the Sales and Marketing functions in such a way as they provide a formal continuous update of the market position. This will include activities such as Sales Forecasting and Demand Management, and Customer Relationship Management.
Supply
- where all of the activities, which a company manages, with respect to both internal and external supply resources are grouped. Hence the focus is on how to develop and manage plans for internal manufacturing resources, and to make sure that these are reasonable and realistic, and hence deliver the strategy and goals of our organisation.
Innovation
- where the management and co-ordination of all the activities which bring together "new things" to the organisation are grouped together. Thus this will cover New Product Development, new Manufacturing activities, through to implementation of new systems. This requires effective project and programme management, within the framework of properly prioritised activities - focused on the strategic direction of the business, and minimisation of the risk associated with these projects.
Support
- here all of the activities, which are normally seen to support an organisation, which cover Finance, Information Resources, and Human Resources are brought together. The plans that support each of these areas should be fed by and support all of the other plans, and in particular should be focused on the organisations strategic goals and objectives.
These four key processes should be owned and managed by clearly identified process owners and managers, who will normally operate in a cross-functional [skill base] manner.
All organisations need Continuous Improvement. Hence we see that companies should establish a culture and environment in which all people are not satisfied with the status quo, and contribute pro-actively to the development of the organisation. They will use techniques such as "Lean and Agile", "Just-in-Time", "Total Quality", "Six Sigma", "Total Preventive Maintenance", "Quality Functional Deployment", "Design for Manufacture", "ERP II" as appropriate. Key to our approach is that companies should avoid the pursuit of fads and fashions, and a belief that there is a universal panancea. Without customers companies die. Customers want high quality, low total cost, and on-time delivery of goods and services. All of these techniques combined will work to achieve these aims.
Measures
To focus improvement a company needs Measures. Many companies measure the wrong things, and saddle themselves with too many confusing and contradictory measures. The Delos Partnership has therefore developed a core of seven measures, which will enable a company to see whether the fundamental activities of a business are operating effectively. A focus on these measures are more likely to achieve a company's results, rather than the traditional performance measures reported through a standard Profit and Loss account and balance sheet. Sometimes, the interpretation of these reports tend to produce the wrong behaviour in the organisation.
For all of this to work effectively, then there needs to be a clear foundation of Quality Data throughout the organisation, to support the activities of planning and managing the business. This data will cover aspects such as stock, Bill of material data, through to the accuracy of vendor records, and all planning data.
Lastly and most importantly, an organisation is supported by its People. Every company recognises that its people are its key asset. However, clearly a company needs to create the right culture for its people. This should include activities such as effectively empowering people to make decisions, involving them in the decision making process within the organisation, and providing personal development plans, enabling them to grow within the organisation. People should be enabled to work in teams, which requires a recognition of their skills and abilities. It should also enable the teams rather than the individual to be effective. "Nobody is perfect, but a team can be". People should also be free to feel that they can contribute to the continued development of the organisation. However, in many companies people are frightened to say what they think, and provide positive pro-active development of the company's aims and objectives. This requires open and honest communication, positive listening and feedback, and a "no-blame culture".
The Delos Assessment allows your organisation to benchmark its performance in all of these areas. We will then work with you to develop a "Journey to Excellence" to achieve our level of excellence - Platinum - , following the Delos Journey.