The company, Stomil Sanok S.A., is a manufacturer of rubber injected moulded products, primarily for the automotive industry, (" Sto" means I 00 in Polish, and 'mil" means miles). Stomil is tucked away in Sanok, a beautiful mountainous region of southeastern Poland near the Ukrainian and Slovakian borders. Through radical downsizing, Stomil has reduced its workforce from 6,000 people in 1989, to 2500 employees today. Formerly 100% state-owned, Stomil was purchased by the U.S.owned Polish American Enterprise Fund in 1990. The $350 million dollar equity investment fund was set up by President Bush and the U.S. Congress to jump start the Polish economy soon after the fall of communism in 1989. Since its privatization, Stomil has attained phenomenal growth, increasing sales by an average of 25% a year through a very aggressive quality program coupled with a strong marketing push into western Europe and, as is typical in Poland, by utilizing an inexpensive, highly educated workforce.

What most distinguishes Stomil from other companies in Poland that are struggling to meet the challenges of surviving the new free market, is its openness to new ideas and technologies. Stomil was quick to realize that its management needed to understand its processes and what it was doing, before it could implement the radical change needed to be more efficient. Because the required changes were so broad and fundamental, Stomil's management needed to make decisions on where to apply its resources for implementing change. Although this was no easy task, the problem was compounded by the fact that Stomil's management had no western style management training or documented management practices, nor did they possess the type of historical knowledge, or plain experience, required to analyze their operations.

This is where Wizdom was able to help. Unlike most consulting firms operating in Poland, namely the "Big Six", who offer to come into a firm and analyze their organization for them, Wizdom's approach was to ensure that Stomil's management team learned how to analyze their organization themselves. Wizdom provided a standard framework for analysis through the use of Wizdom's proven set of analysis tools, WizdomWorks! The Stomil management team learned a new way of looking at their operations - in terms of processes designed to achieve a common goal, and how those processes affect the value of the final product. The first thing the Wizdom/Stomil BPR team did was to establish a set of AS-IS baseline performance measures in terms of the three measures most affecting the success of any company: cost, quality and time. The team did this by utilizing Wizdom's proven MINERVA methodology for BPR, and the WizdomWorks! BPR analysis tools which are based on the IDEF business process modeling methodology. Once the baseline performance measures of the AS-IS state of the company were established, the management team was then able to perform a "State of the Art" assessment of their organization with the help of a rubber injection moulding expert provided by Wizdom from the U. S.

It is here is where Stomil discovered just where it stood relative to the best companies in the world. Despite the fact that Stomil is one of the most successful companies in Poland and possesses a profound labor cost advantage over the rest of the world, other factors, primarily time, were causing major obstacles to the attainment of world class manufacturing standards. Stomil's main customers, mostly western automobile manufacturers operating in Poland, were demanding that their orders be met on a Just-in-Time basis, and that Stomil have the capability of producing smaller lot sizes and greater product diversity. All of this meant a leaner, more responsive process, from planning all the way down to maintenance and production.

By using all of the Wizdom Works! tools, the Stomil/Wizdom BPR team was able to identify those processes most affecting product lead time - from receiving the order all the way to shipping the finished products. No department in the division was overlooked. All managers were required to participate and at some point to come clean on what they were really doing and why they were doing it. The team then analyzed the processes according to the MINERVA methodology and proceeded to create the TO-BE model of the organization, eliminating non-value added processes, and adding new, redesigned processes when necessary. Through the various methods of Activity Based Costing (ABC), Total Quality Management (TQM), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and timeline analysis, the team and the manager from varying division were about to come up with no less than nine detailed Business process improvement recommendations for Stomil.

The time and cost savings resulting from the implementation of these recommendations were at levels that are unheard of in Western companies today. Time reductions in production cycle time are over 90%. Material savings due to reduces scrap are over 50%. Planning processes are reduced by 75%. The list goes on and on. Granted, when you start at levels very low relative to western standards, and apply a proven state of the art analysis methodology, these numbers are not unrealistic. The Polish economy mirrors these possibilities by the fact that it is the fastest growing economy in all of Europe. But these numbers also attest to the effectiveness of applying a structured approach to the analysis of complex organizations. The entire project was performed in just eight weeks!

Furthermore, the entire database and the tools (WizdomWorks!) used for performing the analysis is in the hands of the Stomil management team. Most importantly, the Polish managers who were on the project team have the knowledge to do the analysis and use the tools. They can now proceed with the process of continuous improvement, on their own, by creating internal BPR teams and building upon the databases already in their possession. They have insured us that they are going to be able to respond to the increasing demands of both their western and Polish customers in Poland and abroad, and that they are not going to be left behind in the race to become a viable force in the Polish, and world, manufacturing environment.