Maersk

https://www.ft.com/content/1f4c6068-1bbc-11e3-b678-00144feab7de

https://www.toolshero.com/quality-management/total-quality-management-tqm/

https://cleartax.in/s/total-quality-management
https://issuu.com/sanjaykumarguptaa/docs/a-project-report-on-a-study-of-total-
quality-manag
http://www.dypatil.edu/pdf/ASTUDY~3.PDF
TQM intro
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/total-quality-management-tqm.asp
company details
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Line
https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/container-lines/maersk line?
field_special_coverage_value=All&page=0%2C1
https://www.maersk.com
W. Edwards Deming, Armand V. Feigenbaum and Joseph M. Juran jointly
developed the concept of TQM. Initially, TQM was originated in the
manufacturing sector but it could be applied to all organizations. The concept of
TQM states that every employee works towards the improvement of work culture,
services, systems, processes and so on to ensure a continuing success of the
organization. TQM is a management approach for an organization, depending upon
the participation of all its members (including its employees) and aiming for a
long-term success through customer satisfaction. This approach is beneficial to all
members of the organization and to the society as well.
The key principles of Total Quality Management
Commitment from the management:

 Plan (drive, direct)

  Do (deploy, support, and participate)
 Check (review)
 Act (recognize, communicate, revise)

Employee Empowerment

 Training
 Excellence team
 Measurement and recognition
 Suggestion scheme

Continuous Improvement

 Systematic measurement
 Excellence teams
 Cross-functional process management
 Attain, maintain, improve standards

Customer Focus

 Partnership with Suppliers

 Service relationship with internal customers
 Customer-driven standards
 Never compromise quality

Benefits of Total Quality Management

The benefits arising from the implementation of a Total Quality Management in an
organization are:

 This will increase the awareness of quality culture within the organization.
 A special emphasis on teamwork will be achieved.

 Commitment: Quality improvement (in all aspect) must be everyone’s job

in the organization. An apparent commitment from the top management,
breaking down the barriers for continuous quality improvement and steps
 required to provide an environment for changing attitudes must be provided.
Training and support for this should be extended.

 TQM will lead to a commitment towards continuous improvement.

Essential requirements for successful implementation of TQM

 Culture: There should be proper training to effect the changes in attitude

and culture.
 Continuous Improvement: Recognize improvement as a continuous
process, and not merely a one-off program.
 Customer Focus: Perfection in service with zero defectives and full
satisfaction to end-user whether it’s internal or external.
 Control: Ensure monitoring and control checks for any deviation from the
intended course of implementation.

1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act

This also referred to as the PDCA cycle.

Planning Phase: This phase is the most crucial phase of total quality management.
Under this phase, employees have to come up with their respective queries and
problems which need to be addressed. The employees apprise the management of
different challenges which they are facing in their day to day operations and also
analyze the root cause of the problem. They need to do the required research and
collect significant data which would help them find solutions to all the problems.
Doing Phase: In this phase, a solution for the identified problems in the planning
phase is developed by the employees. Strategies are devised and implemented to
crack down the challenges faced by employees. The efficiency and effectiveness of
solutions and strategies are also evaluated in this stage.
Checking Phase: Under this phase, a comparison analysis of before and after is
done in order to assess the effectiveness of the processes and measure the results.
Acting Phase: This is the last phase of the cycle, in this phase employees
document their results and prepare themselves to address other problems.
Beliefs about Total Quality Management
Following are the universal Total Quality Management beliefs:

 Satisfaction of the customer/owner is the measure of quality.

 Everyone is an owner.
 Continuous Quality improvement must be there.
 Analysis of the processes is the key to quality improvement.
 Constant TQM is not possible without consistent, active and enabling
leadership by managers at all levels.
 It is important to incessantly improve quality of the products and services
which we are supposed to provide to our customers/owners.

Understanding Total Quality Management

Total quality management (TQM) is a structured approach to overall
organizational management. The focus of the process is to improve the quality of
an organization's outputs, including goods and services, through continual
improvement of internal practices. The standards set as part of the TQM approach
can reflect both internal priorities and any industry standards currently in place.

Industry standards can be defined at multiple levels and may include adherence to
various laws and regulations governing the operation of the particular business.
Industry standards can also include the production of items to an understood norm,
even if the norm is not backed by official regulations.

Practical approach Total Quality Management

When you implement total quality management, you implement a concept. It is not
a system that can be implemented but a line of reasoning that must be incorporated
into the organization and its culture.

Practice has proved that there are a number of basic assumptions that contribute to
a successful roll-out of total quality management within an organization.

These basic assumptions are:

 Train senior management on total quality management principles and ask for
their commitment with respect to its roll-out.
  Assess the current culture, customer satisfaction and the quality system.;
 Senior management determines the desired core values and principles and
communicates this within the organization.
 Develop a basic total quality management plan using the basic starting
principles mentioned above.
 Identify and prioritize customer needs and the market and determine the
organization’s products and services to meet those needs.
 Determine the critical processes that can make a substantial contribution to
the products and services.
 Create teams that can work on process improvement for example quality
circles.
 Managers support these teams using planning, resources, and by providing
time training.
 Management integrates the desired changes for improvement in daily
processes. After the implementation of improved processes, standardization
takes place.;
 Evaluate progress continuously and adjust the planning or other issues if
necessary.
 Stimulate employee involvement. Awareness and feedback lead to an overall
improvement of the entire process. Support this for example by means of a
reward model, i.e. Management by Objectives, and recognition.

Maersk Line is a Danish international container shipping company and the

largest operating subsidiary of the Maersk Group, a Danish business
conglomerate. It is the world's largest container shipping company by both
fleet size and cargo capacity, serving 374 offices in 116 countries. It employs
approximately 31,600, of which 7,000 are shipping crew and 24,600 processing
personnel.[1][2] Maersk Line operates over 786 vessels and has a capacity of 4.1
million TEU.[3] The company was founded in 1928.[ A.P. Moller - Maersk is an
integrated container logistics company. Connecting and simplifying trade to
help our customers grow and thrive. With a dedicated team of over 76,000,
operating in 130 countries; we go all the way to enable global trade for a
growing world.

History[edit]
At the beginning of the 1920s, A.P. Moller considered possibilities of going into
liner trade business. The tramp trade, where vessels sailed from port to port
depending on the demand, was expected to lose ground to liners in time. On 12
July 1928, the vessel LEISE MÆRSK left Baltimore on its first voyage from the
American East Coast via the Panama Canal to the Far East and back. The cargo
consisted of Ford car parts and other general cargo. This heralded the start of
Maersk's shipping services. Maersk Line began to grow in 1946 after the Second
World War by transporting goods between America and Europe before expanding
services in 1950. On 26 April 1956, ocean-borne container transport was
introduced with the shipment of a Sea-Land container aboard the SS Ideal X from
Port Newark, New Jersey, to Houston, Texas. In 1967, Anglo carrier P&O was part
of the first European initiative, a pooling of liner services from four companies,
into the new company Overseas Containers Limited (OCL). Both Sea-land and
P&O would later be taken over by Maersk Line as it expanded operations between
1999 and 2005.[5]
In 1999, Maersk entered into an agreement on acquisition of Safmarine Container
Lines (SCL) and its related liner activities from South African Marine Corporation
Limited (Safmarine). At the time of acquisition, Safmarine Container Lines
operated approximately 50 liner vessels and a fleet of about 80,000 containers. It
covered a total of ten trades and fully complemented Maersk Line’s existing
network. Safmarine Container Lines joined the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group as an
independent unit with its own liner activities.
On 10 December 1999, the A.P. Moller Group acquired the international container
business of SeaLand Service Inc. The business was integrated with the A.P. Moller
Group companies and as part of the integration, Maersk Line changed its name to
Maersk Sealand. The acquisition comprised 70 vessels, almost 200,000 containers
as well as terminals, offices and agencies around the world.
In May 2005 Maersk announced plans to purchase P&O Nedlloyd[6] for 2.3
billion euros.[7] At the time of the acquisition, P&O Nedlloyd had 6% of the global
industry market share, and Maersk-Sealand had 12%. The combined company
would be about 18% of world market share. Maersk completed the buyout of the
company on 13 August 2005, Royal P&O Nedlloyd shares terminated trading on 5
September. In February 2006, the new combined entity adopted the name "Mærsk
Line"
At the time the company was folded into A.P. Moller, it owned and chartered a
fleet of over 160 vessels. Its container fleet, consisting of owned and leased
vessels, had a capacity of 635,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). Royal P&O
Nedlloyd N.V. had 13,000 employees in 146 countries.
By the end of 2006, Maersk global market share had fallen from 18.2% to 16.8%,
at the same time, the next two largest carriers increased their market
share, MSC went from 8.6% to 9.5% and CMA CGM from 5.6% to 6.5%.[8][9][10] In
January 2008, Maersk Line announced drastic reorganisational measures.[11]
In November 2015, after lower than expected results, Maersk Line announced its
decision to lay off 4000 employees by 2017. The group said it would cut its annual
administration costs by $250 million over the next two years and would cancel 35
scheduled voyages in the fourth quarter of 2015 on top of four regularly scheduled
sailings it canceled earlier in the year.[12]
As of October 2015, Maersk Line along with its subsidiaries of Seago, MCC,
Safmarine and Sea-Land controls a combined 18% share of the total container
shipping market.[13]

Fleet[edit]
As of July 2011 Maersk Line fleet comprises more than 700 vessels (in
combination with Hamburg Süd) and a number of containers corresponding to
more than 3.8 million TEU (Twenty-foot equivalent unit)[14]
In 2006, the largest container ship in the world to date, the E-class vessel Emma
Maersk, was delivered to Maersk Line from Odense Steel Shipyard.[15]
Seven other sister ships have since been built, and in 2011, Maersk ordered 20
even larger container ships from Daewoo, the Triple E class, each with a capacity
of 18,000 containers. The first of these Triple E Class ships was delivered on June
14, 2013 and was christened with the name Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller after the
founder of the Maersk Line.[16]

Sustainability[edit]
In 2011-12, Maersk Line cooperated with the US Navy on testing 7-100% algae
biofuel on Maersk Kalmar.[17][18] From 2007-2014, and mainly due to slow
steaming, Maersk Line reduced its CO2 emissions by 40% or 11 million tonnes,
about the same reduction as the rest of Denmark.[19]
Maersk set a goal in December 2018 to be carbon neutral by 2050.[20] In 2017 the
company's ships emitted 35.5 millions tonnes of CO2e, and it hopes to eliminate
that by using biofuels to power its fleet.[21]

Services[edit]
Maersk Line is best known for its coverage across the globe. Other than its main
trade lanes of Asia-Europe and Trans-Atlantic trades, Maersk Line also offers
extensive coverage between South America and Europe as well as to Africa. The
company also pioneered the innovative concept of Daily Maersk in 2011 which
provided a premium guaranteed service between supply ports of China and
European base ports. Despite support from the trade, Maersk Line was forced to
cut down services due to over supply.[22][23] Recent restructuring of its product have
included upgrades to their Asia - Australia, India to West Africa, and China to
America routes.[24] [25][26]
Other than the main trades, Maersk Line also operates many continental trade
lines. It operates in Intra Asia through MCC Transport, Europe through Seago
Lines and recently re-launched the famousSea-Land Service brand for its intra-
Americas trade lanes.[27]

Maersk Group, world’s largest ocean transport & logistics company, is a

conglomeration of brands like Maersk Line, APM Terminals, DAMCO, Maersk
Container Industry, and Svitzer. (Think European Union is a congregation of
countries like France, Germany, Denmark, and others) Most noticeably, Maersk
Line is the largest shipping line in the world, responsible for 18% of total trade in
the world — the chances are that the shoes on your feet, the fashion piece on your
body, the car you drive, the phone you use, or the laptop you are suing are carried
by one of Maersk’s vessels.

Maersk is not a consumer-facing company (not just yet). Therefore, if you haven’t
gone deep into the business world, you probably have never heard about it. If you
compare each of Maersk’s business unit to known companies by revenue, you can
see Maersk Line itself is comparable to McDonalds or Starbucks.

Though the high flying revenue, Maersk Line’s business model is deceptively easy
to describe: loading customers’ cargos onto one of its gigantic vessels and moving
from one port/terminal to another via water. Applying the aforementioned model in
scale is where the difficulty really kicks in. Imagine you have to manage 800
vessels across five oceans, moving 1 million containers per month supported by 37
thousand Maersk staff located in nearly every country in the world. It is not an easy
feast. ( Merely the thought of working across multiple time zones to roll out any
organizational changes is already giving me a headache)

How Maersk achieved such scale while continuously and consistently improving its
operational efficiency to stay competitive is what amazed me, a grunt from a startup
environment where 30 people can be referred to as a “huge team.”

This is the question I asked myself when I joined Maersk’s think tank, Maersk
Management Consulting, as an internal consultant to contribute to its global
transformation ambition as soon as I wrapped up my studies at Oxford. From
working closely with various verticals and across functions, I concluded the
following 13 reasons that contributed to Maersk’s success.

Supporting ideas 1: To have the courage to fail, but you have to learn from your
mistakes THOROUGHLY.
Maersk became what it is today is, in my opinion, due to neither its first mover
advantage nor luck. On the contrary, though ventured into the ocean transport
business in 1904, Maersk was a latecomer to the party compared to many other
ocean harbingers. In addition, luck-wise after the second world war, Mr. Maersk
lost effectively every profitable vessel he owned. So what exactly contributed to
Maersk’s success? I think its entrepreneurial spirit has something to do with it. If
you mapped out the new ventures Maersk has entered and exited, you’d realize that
Maersk has been an impressive entrepreneurial growth story in the past 114 years
history.

From ocean-related businesses like fishing, whaling, and ferry; to logistic related
businesses like bulk shipping, passenger airlines, forwarding; and to seemly
unrelated industries like sugar plantation, data, and retail, Maersk has tried and
failed at many different things before becoming the industry leader at ocean
transport — Maersk is built on past mistakes.

Although it is a cliche to simply put that success is built on past failures, we all,
particularly the leaders, like to leave the learning opportunities to others and to
maintain our reputation by being correct. Being correct all the time most often box
us in our own comfort zone and prevent us from taking calculated risks — this can
be dangerous if we are in a market with many disruptors. (Think Nokia)

Maersk not only fostered a culture and hosted an impressive history of taking risks
and trying new things, but also scrutinized failed projects in detail.

In 2016, Maersk financed a digital venture called Fromtu to act as an online B2B
marketplace and trading platform, aiming to increase African trade by facilitating
African exports, African imports and generate intra-Africa trade. Unfortunately,
Fromtu’s high ideals met with harsh reality in Africa and decided to stop the loss in
2018.

The key leadership decided not to assign blame but to scrutinize every piece of
information on what went wrong and why. This is the best testimonies of accepting
mistakes as a part of the process of trying something new and the best
encouragement to employees to propose new ideas in the future even if they
sometimes do not pan out.

Supporting ideas 2: Place employees alongside customers and business partners

at every possible opportunity.
“What do women want deserves a lot more credit than its chick flick status. It is
really a genius film about how to succeed in business “, my project leader, Jason,
proclaimed it with some drunken glow surfacing around his cheeks in a bar near a
remote town in Poland. This is the sort of conversation we often run into when we
have been on the roads for too long — how can I complain? For Maersk being a
truly global company, we all knew for what we signed up. “You need to understand
that everything in movies are metaphors. Women are the center focus of Nick
Marshall (portrayed by Mel Gibson)”, Jason continued with a long pause. “Women
are not only the target audience of Nick Marshall’s professional life but also the
sole focus of his private life. Understanding what they like, how they think, and act
on their preference are the key reasons Nick became so lucky with women. Nay,
let’s be real. Nick became such a master, he learned to predict what women like
even before they knew it”,  Jason said it with such passion in his voice as if he was
shouting out words. “What Maersk needs is this laser focus to know exactly what
our customers wants, how they want it, and when they want it; and to act on this
privilege knowledge. One day, when we will be able to predict what our customers
want before they even know it, we’d finally become the master.” With the voice
of Yoda, Jason nodded to his statement as if he was persuaded by his own
argument.

Though it is formatted in a different language, his sentiment is shared across the

Maersk organization. When Maersk wants to release a new idea, a new service, or a
new product, the first thing that the senior leadership team would ask is that “is this
something our key accounts want?” In my project based tenure at Maersk, I spent a
significant amount of time reviewing the feasibility and execution of new business
units like trade finance as well pushed for new services like the product-ize
detention and demurrage offerings. I learned that the earlier I can get detailed
customer inputs the better. Giving real customer inputs early on in the product
design process ensure I can have enough space and time to tailor or even pivot my
offerings — it will allow you to rework my assumptions and offerings that make
little sense to the customer. You’d be surprise how much of your assumptions of
customers do not hold true. (It’d be a real bummer if you show up to your dates
with a bouquet of nice and expansive roses and then realize your date is seriously
allergic to it)

In addition, include business partners in your self-made list of advisors. They most
often will be able to provide the real-world perspective on an array of issues
directly applicable to the product or service you are operating.

Supporting ideas 3: Dig inside your company for creative ideas first.
I started out my career in a role similar to that of an external consultant. Most often,
I was brought in to provide innovative ideas or to review an undergoing
projects/programs/products/services/institutions. My team and I have always tried
our best to deliver some outstanding insights that were appreciated by our clients. In
the beginning, I often leverage my network to aggregate opinions to external
expertise with a grain of salts, and then filter & tailor their ideas as a baseline to
serve my engagement. One time, we were on a project to investigate the feasibility
of deploying a standalone mobile loyalty app to drive the millennial engagement
rate, retention rate, and brand recognition for a regional airline. Per usual, as soon
as I learned the scope of the project, I would go into an auto-piloting mode —
started gathering external resources through connections my personal assistant has
listed out. Over a call, there was this expert who absolutely nailed the problems my
client was facing, giving insights on past key failures, and providing the crucial
rough roadmap for my client’s future development. In our hour conversation, he hit
the bullseye with each point I raised, and I was just busy jotting down notes. When
I went home later that evening, his echoes were still in my mind, so I googled him
even further and realized he actually was a mid-senior level manager at my client’s
firm. My client could very well have given him a call to get the answer he needed
instead of spending money on my team.

The moral of the story is that companies often go to outside experts, consultants,
and advisors for creative ideas, best practices, and inspirations. They often ignore
their own development team and other internal company resources available. More
so than not, those who have been intimately involved with developing a product or
have years of hands-on experience will have great ideas on what is working, what is
not working, and how to improve further.

Maersk Group’s internal consultancy, Maersk Management Consulting, is a glaring

example of mobilizing internal resources and knowledge reserve while bringing in
outside-in perspective.

Maersk Management Consulting(MMC) is an autonomous department sitting in the

Maersk Group’s strategy department, independent from the influences of Maersk’s
many business clouds, most notably Maersk Line, APM Terminals, and Svitzer.
Therefore, MMC could maximize its neutrality and objectivity. In addition,
MMCers are a group of ambitious and driven individuals of whom, 30% came from
established external consultancies, 30% came from Maersk’s business units, 20%
freshly minted from universities, and the rest 20% came from different backgrounds
(e.g. I came from digital startup and venture capital)

(Graph needed) on the slipt

Starting in 2014 (? need to verify), MMC started out as an experiment at best —

lack of executive support, inter-company exposure, and funding. Starting from non-
business driver related projects, MMCers have proven its efficacy, its ability to
connect the link between the leadership and the front line team, its area expertise,
and its outside in objectivity one step at a time. Now, MMC won over the spotlight
of Maersk’s largest transformation effort of the century and became somewhat of a
special force who will be parachuted in to preempt or solve business problems.
Whether you are a senior manager or someone who has only recently started his or
her career, you should, as a rule of thumb, go seek answers internally first before
pouring time, money, and other resources to external channels.

Supporting ideas 4: Look for innovative and systematic ways to STREAMLINE

routine tasks, especially those that are done on a daily basis.
At first, I was not very impressed with my Green Belt in Lean Six Sigma
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Six_Sigma)during my MBA. I thought the
certification deviated from the original intent, was ostracized by the utilitarian goal,
and became purely an academic excercise.

I have to admit, coming from a startup, I had very little empathy towards fixing
operational issues — We simply had much bigger fish to fry — how to bring in
revenue so that my employees will have a salary to receive at the end of the month.
Streamling routine task, making operational improvement, and keeping the process
lean were simply out of my scope. It made sense at the time — my team was only
27 people. However, after participating in Maersk’s transformation projects,
running through the numbers, I started to fathom what continuous improvement
really means to a 22.8 billions p.a. cost company like Maersk.

Without going too much in the weeds of Lean Six Sigma, I want to give you a
quick startup guide of how to systematically streamline routine tasks by using the
famous Toyota Production System(TPS). To do that, I will need to tell you the story
of Toyota and teach you some Japanese words and concepts.

Toyota has long been the auto industry’s most profitable and innovative firm.
Innovative? You might raise your eyebrow and draft in your thoughts of getting that
brand new Tesla. Toyota’s innovation is not the flashy kind that has been coined by
Steve Jobs and his show stage, but rather on process and its factory floor. Although
Toyota’s innovation is hard to see, it is nevertheless powerful.

At the core of Toyota’s innovation and its success lie the Toyota Production
System. A engineer named Taiichi Ohno turned necessity into virtue, designed a
system to get as efficient as possible in every part, every machine, and every
worker. The principles were surprisingly simple, even obvious — reduce waste,
have materials arrive precisely when workers need them, and fix problems as soon
as they arise. Mr. Onho used Henry Ford’s streamline production as aspiration and
supermarket’s stuffing as blueprint, and he took Toyota to another level — better
than any manufacturing company at the time. It has done so by reorganizing
workspaces, striving for incremental yet continuous improvement in order to allow
for a freer and easier flow of materials and information. Onho coined the terms
Kaizen, Muda, Muri, Mura to illustrate what it means to be continuously
improving.

KAIZAN 改善

Kaizan means continuous improvement in Japanese. It is part action plan and part
philosophy where employees at all levels of an organization can work together
proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements to the daily process,
whether it is manufacturing, communication, or pushing papers.

 As an action plan, Kaizen is about organizing events and setting up roles

focused on improving specific areas within the operations

 As a philosophy, Kaizen is about building a meticulous and self enforcing

culture where all employees are actively engaged in suggesting and
implementing improvements to the company and be rewarded. In truly lean
companies, Kaizen becomes a natural way of thinking for both leaders and
implementers

Kaizen in action sometimes is synonymous with standardization of process which

means to capture a particular micro segment of a CURRENT process, to analyze it,
to derive best practices, to standardize it, and to push it out to magnify its effect
across. Image you are a hot-shot detective who maps out the critical events in a
linear timeline leading to a crime occurrence and studies every details of each
critical path using a magnifying glass.

A key to standardized work is having living a best-practices document that can

continually evolves through Kaizen. And a typical Kaizen engagement cycle goes
something like this:

1) Set goals and provide necessary background, context, motivation, end results.
2) Review the current as-is state and develop a plan for future improvements

3) Implement improvements and collect implementation issues

4) Review and fix what does not work

5) Report results and determine any follow-up items

2) The Toyota 3M model:

One of the most important goals of lean process is to eliminate waste. Mr. Taiichi
Ohno, father of the Toyota Production System (TPS) defined three categories of
waste: Muda, Muri, and Muda; and the goal is to eliminate unnecessary steps
(muda), to eliminate bottlenecks/unevenness(mura), and to to eliminate the
possibility of burning out employees with unreasonable burden (muri)

2.1) MUDA 無駄

Muda refers to processes or activities that don’t add value. These types of waste do
not help your business or workers in any way. They increase costs and make tasks
take much longer than they should.

Unless Maersk’s Triple E super Panama class vessels can march directly into
customer’s warehouse and be filled up, there will always be some sort of waste that
gets in the way of 100% “revenue generation”. (Revenue generation starts with the
vessel left the port in sailing mode) Naturally, in the past 40 years, Maersk has put
much of the focus to reduce the time and cost as much as it can. However, we still
have a long way to go. (We have to know that 100% reduction of waste is never
possible)

Muda is defined by eight archetypes. To make it easy to remember, let’s call it the
DOWNTIME dimensions:

1) Defects
2) Overproduction

3) Waiting

4) Non-used, Idle resources

5) Transport

6) Inventories

7) Motion

8) Excess processing

You can benchmark your process to these 8 dimensions to see if there is anything
can be done. 99% of the time, the answer is yes. Finding and eliminating Muda is
essential if you want to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase profits.
However, if you don’t also address mura and muri, these benefits will be
inconsistent or may even fade away quickly.

2.2) MURA 無斑

Mura is a type of waste caused by unevenness in the process. It is also caused when
standards are nonexistent or are not followed. When you map out the whole
business process of Maersk operation, you’d find many nodes in between handling.
These nodes at a higher conceptual level include, for example: from trucks picking
up empty containers in the depot, from trucks going into customer’s warehouse to
be loaded, from trucking going from customer warehouse to the Marinetime
terminal, from trucks waiting in line to get documents checked, from containers to
be released from trucks and decked onto a container yard, from containers going
from a contain yard to an actual vessel. The above examples are the tip of an
iceberg for we can further break these nodes down in more a granular level.

In a perfect scenario, when the trucks arrive in the empty container yard, there is
one readily available empty container ready to be picked up; when trucks go into
customer’s warehouse, the merchandise have already been sorted and workers are
ready to load them into the container; when trucks are driving from the warehouse
to the maritime terminal, there are not too many trucks congested the roads to the
terminal, etc. You get the idea. In reality, what I described rarely happens. There is
unevenness at each nodes.

In an office environment, for instance, you need to prepare 10 slides presentation

for a recurring meeting once every 5 weeks. You have a sequential process with
different employees at each nodes: Jason to get the data, Ben to analyze the data,
Jen to align the findings, and Marry to output the findings. If Jen’s process takes
significantly more time than Jason’s and Marry’s, no matter how efficient Jason can
be, the process speed will be frozen at Jen’s level. Jen’s node becomes the
bottleneck of the operation Then we have to investigate if it is Jen who is slow or if
the process assignment is rational and efficient.

What’s the result of unevenness in the process? Customers receive inconsistent

products or services. The some production floors struggle to complete large orders,
and some production floors become idle. Even more concerning is that mura creates
muri (overburden), which in turn undermines efforts to eliminate the seven wastes
of muda.

2.3) MURI 無理

There always can be a time where your associates have to run that extra mile and
give that extra effort to make sure the customer demand is fulfilled. There is
nothing wrong with it if it happens once in a while like when you try to win over a
project. However, it becomes a problem if you want to normalize it. It is simply not
sustainable. Do you remember those 72-hour-before-the-exam cramming sessions
you often pulled in university becomes your daily study routine. It is just a matter of
time you’d be burned out — even if you overwork your machines, they break down
easily.

When operators or machines are utilized closed to 100% of their capability on a

regular basis, it is just a matter of time when they are overburdened. To prevent
overworked employees, the company should focus on all process designs and all
standard work initiatives. To optimize the use of machines and vessels and make
sure they function properly and safely, preventative and autonomous maintenance
should be considered implemented.

When the employees are overworked on a daily basis, you can find, for the most
part, that this is because the employees:

 Lack of proper training

 Have no standards to follow

 Are given the wrong tools for the job

When workers lack the standards to follow, for example, tasks become much more
difficult, take more time to complete with no quality assurance. For instance, one
time I asked my six stakeholders to fill in a status report card without a standard
template. It doubled the time for my stakeholders to figure out what to write; it
tripled the time for me to consolidate the notes; it quadruple the alignment time for
us because we have to rework a big portion of the material.

Eliminating Muda, mura, and muri

The purpose of continuous improvement (Kaizen) is to find and eliminate Muda,

mura, and muri, in order to improve quality, safety, and efficiency. Here is a simple
to use 4-component framework: PDCA( Plan, Do, Check, and Act). The nice thing
about PDCA is that it brings a disciplined, and nearly scientific, approach to
making improvements (who does not like Science):

 PLAN: Understand the underlying problems, motivation and objectives

 DO: Conduct analysis and carry out small-scale experiements

 CHECK: Review the analysis, check sense check the results, and refine the
approach

 ACT: Take actions from the learnings and apply it at scale

In conclusion, an operation-heavy company like Maersk should embrace
continuous improvement as a long term strategy with action points and one of the
philosophical bedrocks in its culture. Every employees within the company should
understand the concept of Kaizen with the PDCA framework as a guideline to solve
Muda, Muri, Mura in daily operations.

To be continued…

Supporting ideas 5: Act like a market leader — humbleness.

One of Maersk’s core values is humbleness. I remembered during my very first day
at Maersk, I went through the orientation like any other wide-eyed newbies and
listened to the narrator proudly announce the meaning behind Humbleness “
Showing trust and giving empowerment to those among you. Continually
improving your craft and never underestimating our competitors or stakeholders.”

To me, it really means to listen, learn, share, and give space to others — internally
or externally. Maersk is an indisputable industry leader in its scale and
effectiveness, and it acts like a leader — — something that many companies simply
fail to do. “We are the leader in this space — act like it. Do not be ashamed, bashful
or defensive about it. ” The old man, McKinney Møller, once said in a town hall
meeting to his employees. His speech was remarkable in a Danish culture
context, where people were raised to believe that they are no better than others and,
from my perspective, often time feel awkward about being no.1 in anything.

What the old man’s speech was not about beating the “we are the biggest dog in the
house” drumbeat all the time. It means to act “big” and own “big” by acting
humble, avoiding cockiness, and never belittling competitors.

Market leaders are humble, avoid cockiness and never belittle their competitors.
They also put a human face on the company’s service and products and know their
competitor personally. A market leader believes healthy competition is good, and
looks for opportunity to expand the overall market size for everyone

1. Maersk is proactively seeking to grow and always strive to grow the pie
If you can’t win, find ways to change the rules.
1. When trying to break into an existing market with a new product, dont just
try and offer the same as everyone else. That’s a hard sell. A far better strategy
is to try and change the competitive playing field by introducing a new product
or service that is markedly different from everyone else’s, and with more added
value features

2. VAS Team on creating valued added service cross different brands, growth
team looking for innovative way to support small startups, digital team create
new digital products

Always think three moves ahead — Constant Care

1. As well as planning a price cut, you should also be thinking about what you
will do if your competitor responds by matching your price cut. Or how offset a
competitor’s product release with a news release of your own. Business
planning should always take into account the realities of the marketplace, and
allow for competitive responses.

2. Maersk likes to not only pressure test its future strategy, but also … need
input

Hit’em where they ain’t

1. When going head to head with a well-established competitor, look for niche
markets they don’t already own as a viable entry point. Do not take them on
where they’re strongest

Win-win deals are possible to structure if both parties focus on what they care about
and what their partners care about
1. Most often, parties to a negotiation have different objectives they want to
achieve. The best business transactions are always structured so each party
achieved what it wants.

Try it out in the real world

1. When develop a new product or service, get it in front of its target audience
as soon as possible to test your hypothesis. This will provide worthwhile
 feedback on how to develop it further. Incrementally attaching a large problem
is usually most effective.

2. Pilotting on new concepts

Make big bets — our name

1. Maersk bet millions of dollars and the time of its best talents on transforming
itself.

2. Buying Hamburg sud, selling maersk energy

Set up a public presentation or launch date

1. To avoid getting bogged down on a project, scheduled a public presentation
or launch date

2. Need example outside of MMC

Chapter 2 How to do your job well

Main idea:

In the good old days of business, doing your job well simply meant completing
assignments on time and within budget. Today, however, standing out at work
requires you to go beyond your direct responsibilities and think about the impact of
your work on the department and company as a whole, and to figure out creative
ways to get things under control. If you can think on behalf of the stake owner, your
service could be much more demanding.

https://medium.com/what-i-learned-at-maersk-rookies-survival-guide-to/chapter-1-
how-to-run-a-business-like-maersk-does-4eea9226b53
Maersk Container Sales
Even when containers have been used in active service or need repair, they can still
be a good structure and building block for a variety of purposes. We have a
commitment to protecting the environment and to making sure we have as small an
impact on energy consumption as possible.