The Rabobank Nederland Trade Services department provides its customers with documentary products/services that enable them to reduce or eliminate risks in international trade (risk mitigation). The products involved are letters of credit, bank guarantees and direct debits. Trade Services serves all of the Rabobank’s SME and corporate customers.

The proposition
The Trade Services department deals with processes and products that are very knowledge-intensive. Trade Services wanted to streamline its processes so that it could deal flexibly with the fluctuating market supply. For this reason, the decision was made to optimise the Trade Services processes using the Lean philosophy, which aims to reduce processing times and increase productivity whilst keeping quality high.

Our role
SPRING UNITED’s approach is geared towards process knowledge. Work began with the analysis of the existing operational data, such as production speed and planning effectiveness. This process identifies various types of ‘waste’, as defined by Lean. Defining the various types of waste allowed the determination of potential areas of improvement within the operational processes, which were then further analysed and taken up as ‘quick wins’ with the help of internal resources.
SPRING UNITED was also asked to embed the new guidelines within the department’s reporting processes. To this end, our consultant developed a new reporting method in combination with the Management Information System (MIS) department.

Our added value
Due to the pragmatic project approach, the Lean culture now permeates the entire department. Everybody is aware of why the processes have been streamlined and all employees have been trained in the Lean principles and are fully aware of the advantages this provides.
A report was created depicting the daily guiding mechanisms (such as productivity and processing time), which is used to direct the processing teams. Because these figures are also shared daily among the various teams, everyone has taken on a feeling of responsibility regarding the department’s performance. The team managers now have the tools for making an independent waste analysis, allowing them to maintain efficiency within their own processes.