Blog: Transforming APM Terminals using every brain & heart in the game - by COO, Keith Svendsen

Across APM Terminals, we are transforming our organisation by investing in educating our people to eliminate waste, boost productivity and promote innovation every day.

We are now four years into this journey. If you are lucky enough to spend time at our terminals, you will proudly see our people regularly going to Gemba and huddling around their visual management boards as a part of their daily accountability process and collaborating in their latest problem solving (Kaizen) opportunities and events.

Our Lean business system Way of Working (WoW) is starting to impact our people, safety, and customers and has provided us with a foundation to build our success upon.

As I write this, from a low level of lean maturity, more than half of our workforce have been trained on our Lean Academy and in 2020, we delivered more than 3,500 Kaizens activities to meet the needs of our customers.

As a senior leader, I often encounter a question: how do we at APM Terminals get our people engaged with our lean journey? Well, that answer is simple: we have involved ‘every brain and heart in the game.

Let me share with you an example. Our Suez Canal Container Terminal (SCCT) colleagues now have a common saying, ‘If it isn’t broken, then break it and fix it to be better. Our Way of Working education, tools and behaviours have entirely transformed how they run, improve, and transform their business.

Although familiar with the Six Sigma concepts before introducing WOW four years ago, their improvement culture was primarily project-based and driven by a few management black/green/yellow belts from various functions. This approach only reached and engaged limited parts of the terminal’s potential.

By involving ‘every brain and heart in the game’ at SCCT, we have been able to get all hands on deck and systematically pull all our employees into the program– especially our frontline workforce. This is where the magic happened.

Team members saw the early results of their small Kaizens during problem-solving boot camps and not only believed in the approach, but they were also genuinely excited by it. The common-sense Lean toolkit resonated with them and taught them how to approach problems pragmatically and systemically.

The following story continues to inspire me. Two crane operators joined the first WoW onboarding session and were openly sceptical, but today they are both Lean coaches to their colleagues. Now they are leading and coaching others after realising that our Lean tools were accessible, relatable and enabled them to do their job smarter.

Both operators, Mr Gaser and Mr Gergis, have improved the place where they (and their colleagues) spend most of their time coaching 5S and executing Kata Kaizen on STS Quay cranes and RTG cabins improving the safety for them and their colleagues.

(see above image: Mr Gaser and Mr Gergis who now are Lean coaches, leading their colleagues through our WoW)

In 2020 SCCT was crowned our WoW ‘Terminal of the Year’ by outperforming and breaking all previous year’s performance. They have eagerly announced that 2021 will be their “year of growth” as they use their Policy Deployment (also known as Hoshin Kanri) to align and engage their employees on their strategy, which includes their three-year breakthrough objectives. Also, SCCT is getting ready to participate in their first-ever weeklong Kaikaku Kaizen event, specifically designed to advance their breakthrough objectives.

SCCT is only one example. Across our terminal portfolio, our front liners, equipped with lean knowledge and aligned on our strategy, work on their performance shift by shift and vessel by vessel. Our supporting functions know how to better contribute to the overall performance of the terminals. Finally, but critically, our Leadership teams are coaching, supporting, facilitating, and leading the way.

Our APM Terminals, WoW, enables us to develop a genuine culture of continuous improvement that ensures our people are engaged and safe. Our customers are prioritised, and our performance is improving year on year.