Making sense of opportunities in building material production

Abstract

Purpose – Breakthrough improvement requires management decisions, which indicates that making sense of existing opportunities is important. This is a particular challenge when the improvement is a possibility and not a problem. The purpose of this paper is to propose the practice of doing an Opportunity Study as the way to create a sense of management urgency for realising dormant possibilities. Design/methodology/approach – A process-based Opportunity Study is presented consisting of a Diagnosing-Analysing-Solving (DAS) approach. Benchmarks are defined and compared with the actual performance resulting in a quantifiable improvement potential (D). Main causes are analysed (A), which leads to proposed solutions (S). The Opportunity Study practice is applied to a cement milling process, a cement plant and a supply network for cement-based building products. Findings – Results indicate that applying DAS methodology highlights realisable opportunities in all of the studied cases. This seems to be a necessary, but not sufficient criterion to create a sense of urgency for facts based change. Research limitations/implications – The results indicate that there is need for further research for looking at the process of sense making and to what extent facts alone can drive change initiatives. Practical implications – Results indicate that by a simple review, focusing on what a system can do instead of which the problems are, valuable opportunities for improvement could be detected. Originality/value – The paper highlights the value of focusing on opportunities.