CooperVision
Case Study
The Challenge
Seeing the need for effective employee engagement to drive innovation and improvement
was never a problem for CooperVision. However, devising a robust system that delivered
consistent results within the requirements of the FDA and other regulating bodies was.
Since contact lenses are classed as ‘medical devices’, their manufacture is subject to
strict controls and requirements. As a result, any fundamental change requires a full risk
assessment, and even small changes need to be thoroughly scrutinized and signed off.
CooperVision were clear that an effective innovation management system was only part
of their wider aim of effective employee engagement. For historical reasons (more on that
later), the company placed more emphasis on the process of submitting ideas to improve
the workplace rather than on innovation to improve their turnover. If an idea turned into an
innovation that improved the business’s profitability, great, but fundamentally their eye was
on the level of incremental improvements, not their ROI.
So, the challenge was to create a system that not only encouraged employees to
submit ideas and suggestions for improvements, but to empower them to make those
changes happen.
Factfile
Name: CooperVision
Profile: CooperVision is one of the
largest contact lens manufacturers
in the world, and the leading
manufacturer of toric lenses. With
facilities in five different continents,
CooperVision have 4 facilities near
Hamble in Hampshire, UK.
Challenge: Converting a paperbased suggestion scheme into a full
online employee engagement and
innovation management system,
within the constraints of the highly
regulated medical device industry.
Our co-developed solution underpinned both the process of improvement and formalised
the reviews required for a regulatory compliant organisation, often involving multiple staff
members and levels of sign off.
“As a benchmark of our progress we recently won the
prestigious British Safety Council four star award...”
“At Coopervision Manufacturing Limited one of our major foundation level objectives is to
establish a continuous improvement culture that delivers sustainable improvements in our
results and create a dynamic and friendly working environment for everyone involved in the
business. To achieve this we need to involve and engage our employees. As a benchmark
of our progress we recently won the prestigious British Safety Council four star award. The
BSC assessor said that the level of employee engagement in our Bright Spark (TalkFreely)
and 5S* programs were key factors in achieving this high level of assessment first time. We
are committed to continuously improving everything we do and our Bright Spark system
(TalkFreely) is proving to be a key system in achieving our objectives.”
Kevin Barrett, Managing Director of UK Manufacturing at CooperVision
Engage. Innovate. Improve.
The Approach
At CooperVision, a management team
identified three distinct requirements in
developing what became known as the
“Bright Spark” employee engagement
process.
1. A clear, standardised, workflow for
the submission and implementation
of ideas.
2. A robust online software platform that
mirrored the workflow process.
3. A central “access point” through which
all employees would be listened too
and their ideas implemented, with all
the personal attention and resources
required from managers to make
that happen.
review is required or not. Ideas are then
opened up to review and comments by
employees and managers.
Once there is general concurrency on an
idea, a full review is only required if it is
affected by FDA compliance issues; if not,
managers can give the go-ahead for staff
to make changes.
From the outset, CooperVision were
determined to devote sufficient resource
time to Bright Spark. At present, managers
meet every two weeks for a 2-hour meeting
to look at new ideas and progress existing
ideas further. TalkFreely’s online platform
comes into its own at these meetings,
as CooperVision’s online management
dashboard is projected ‘live’ onto a screen
for everyone to see.
Manufacturing contact lenses is a 24hour, 7 day a week, multi-shift operation,
and it became very apparent to the
management team that predominantly
work Monday to Friday, 9-5 that some staff
were feeling excluded from the decisionmaking process. Indeed, there was a
historic problem that changes and ideas
implemented by one shift were rejected by
another shift, so ideas often ‘flip-flopped’
between teams with no real progress made.
During the meeting, managers can
approve ideas for further progression or
review, and allocate time and resources
accordingly, logging this progress straight
onto the system. The goal is that ideas
moderation should be done in under 14
days; if not, the system reports the delay.
As Gary Prince remarks, “The last thing
we want to create is an ever-increasing
job list!”
Gary Prince, Senior CI Engineer at
CooperVision Hamble, is very clear on that
major motivation behind implementing
“Bright Spark”:
Results & Successes
“At the heart of Bright Spark is the
engagement of staff; we knew the night
shift often didn’t feel involved in our ideas
management process and had limited
channels for their input. We also realized
that for any system to gain credibility
with the workforce, they not only needed
a sense of their ideas being listened to,
but could also see those ideas being
implemented.
Bright Spark and 5S are foundations for
CooperVision’s continuous improvement
program; they encourage our staff to think
about their work environment and actively
improve it”
The Phases
Each idea submitted takes a number of
steps through the Bright Spark system,
appropriate to the nature of the idea. Line
managers risk-assess each idea and
suggestion against a set of 10 questions,
which determines if a high-level moderator
Bright Spark was initially rolled out to
30% of the Hamble workforce, involving
approximately 500 people in both
management and manufacturing.
While the primary aim of Bright Spark
is to promote employee engagement,
Gary is keen to point out that the result is
usually incremental change rather than
company-wide changes. Most Bright
Spark innovations result in shop floor level
changes that improve the working lives
of employees. The Bright Spark process
enables staff to make seemingly small
but significant changes that have a huge
impact on their own workspace.
For example, one suggestion was to reuse
boxes in the packing department; all it
took was one Bright Spark to suggest
a suitable way to obliterate previous
markings on the boxes. For another
operator in the department, the simple
provision of small handheld mirrors
eliminated the need for him and his
colleagues to constantly bend down to
check box content labels, improving both
their health and their efficiency.
Ideas and discussions can now take
place online via the Bright Spark interface.
Members of different shifts who never
actually meet each other in working hours
can easily be part of the same discussion
online, contributing and moving ideas
forward whatever the time of day.
The Future
The roll-out of Bright Spark to
CooperVision’s various manufacturing
business units continues at the time of
writing, progressing from the smaller
units to the larger. A roll-out to office and
non-shift workers is also happening in
tandem. Gary Prince views each roll-out as
prototype areas, providing good examples
of how the feedback system works in
practice and a valuable opportunity to
train up new staff and managers in its
use. Bright Spark is clearly working for
CooperVision too; over 300 ideas have
been submitted in the first 10 months, and
as the roll-out progresses into new units,
that flow of innovative ideas is increasing.
John Cole, Senior Continuous
Improvement Manager at CooperVision,
is delighted with the success not only of
Bright Spark but also of the partnership
with TalkFreely. “Many of our employees do
not have regular access to a PC, however
we wanted them to be as equally involved
as their colleagues. Gary spoke with
TalkFreely and they agreed to enhance
their software so staff could submit and
track the progress of their ideas without
the need of an email account. This saved
CooperVision over $50K in additional
e-mail license costs alone.”
Bright Spark’s success is down to
teamwork. Gary, Bianca Walcroft, our CI
Leader and Talk Freely working as a team to
create the system and our workforce acting
as a team to turn their ideas into action.”
Contact us
Call
UK +44 (0)845 050 8444
Email [email protected]
Visit www.TalkFreely.com
(*5S – This is the name of a workplace organisation methodology that uses a list of five
Japanese words which are seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke.)
Engage. Innovate. Improve.