CASE STUDY FUJITSU

Lean creates a solid platform for growth
“The lean approach is enabling us to take on extra business more easily as we know we have the flexibility to provide a greater range of services.”
Ian Cooley – Service Delivery Manager (Operations), SMC, Infrastructure Services, Fujitsu Customer’s Challenge Fujitsu Services is a leading European information technology services company, with an annual turnover of £2.46 billion (€3.59 billion) and over 19,000 employees in 20 countries. The company’s awardwinning Sense and Respond approach is designed to meet the needs of customers in terms of quality, cost and delivery time using minimum resources, by identifying and removing the root causes and costs of operational problems. Philosophically Sense and Respond takes a lead from the Lean management methodologies developed in the manufacturing industry, especially by Toyota and Unipart, by aligning all the participants in a process to meet the real needs of customers, and eliminating any waste or unnecessary processes. However, Fujitsu saw an opportunity to embed the principles and techniques of Lean more deeply into the process. Jo Peck, Sense and Respond Implementation Manager, Sense and Respond Institute, Fujitsu, explains, “Sense and Respond is what enables Fujitsu to deliver what matters to our customers. But the question was how could be we build and grow it to include even more of the Lean approach? How could we remove more waste from the process and deliver better customer value, all supported by cultural change and continuous improvement?” Fujitsu Solution In order to evaluate which Lean tools and techniques could be successfully incorporated and how, Fujitsu chose to run a pilot in its Customer Services organisation, which was led by consultants from Unipart, the UK's largest independent supplier of car and truck components and a leading exponent