The LCS Impact Awards

Hilti Global Logistics Organization

LCS Impact Award: Engaging people and creating value through lean upskilling

Background

Hilti stands for quality, innovation, and direct customer relationship. With more than 32,000 employees in more than 120 countries, the family-owned Hilti Group supplies the worldwide construction and energy industries with technologically leading products, systems, software, and services with the sole purpose of making construction better. Continuous improvement is implicit in the company purpose and the company has a caring and performance-oriented culture as a strategic foundation. This has allowed Lean activities to grow and develop throughout the company in the last years. At the beginning of 2022, the company’s Lean upskilling program was accredited by the LCS. The program uses the 70-20-10 approach: After a self-learning and training sessions, learners are required to demonstrate knowledge and practical capability delivering continuous improvement projects at different levels. This created a great opportunity to motivate employees to engage in continuous improvement activities and the Global Logistics Organization at Hilti decided to use it to accelerate their lean journey and create value (economic impact, customer experience improvement, CO2 reduction, H&S) for the customer and the business.

Activity

The global logistics management team took the decision to deploy the program worldwide and took some key decisions and actions.

• Clear upskilling expectations for regions and functions were defined, agreed, and communicated.
• The program was deployed trough assigned global and regional trainers with clearly defined R&R
• Clear selection criteria for participation were established, trainings scheduled, and mentors assigned.
• Employees participating in the programs were responsible to deliver lean projects according to their level.
• A global steering board has been put in place to frequently review the progress.
• Recognition activities have been organized to celebrate results and certifications.
• An award was designed to recognize the best performing region globally at the end of the year: The living Lean Award
• The program was running throughout 2022 and results were summarized at the end of the year.

Impact

The program received great acceptance from leaders and team members and after one year the global logistics organization achieved results that exceeded the original expectations:

• The upskilling program has been deployed in all 10 geographical regions through local / regional trainers.
• LCS approved trainers’ certificates given to 11 trainers in the regions.
• More than 150 leaders and team members were certified in at least one of the levels.
• Over 650 employees (Around 40% of the total global logistics population) were involved in CI activities.
• This created an overall impact of 5M+ CHF. Doubling the previous year result.
• Employee engagement score increased significantly in regions which exceled in program deployment.
• Living Lean Award granted to the region with the best performance.