International Project in Denmark!

Vejen frem?– f?lles v?kst

Roughly translates to: The way forward - growing together.

This is the Solutions Denmark strategy motto.
A simple but powerful phrase encompassing the commitment to customers,
employees and communities that DSV holds at the core of its business.        

Welcome back everyone, this is the 6th edition of my newsletter.

Let me preface it by stating the obvious, it is not easy to summarize an entire month of lessons learned, experience and growth, so brace for a lengthy edition.

This time I will focus on the project itself, the next edition will focus on the cultural and personal aspects of my experience and how these have influenced me.

So let me start from the beginning. My original project statement:

To develop a template, structure or process for invoicing auditors that helps them do invoicing audits in a fast, secure and reliable way when a customer is up for review.

To this end, I arrived in Denmark on the 25th of July 2023, and I was given a much needed day to settle down and rest.

This also allowed me to have some local experiences for the first time. I rode a bicycle through the beautiful lanes of Roskilde to buy some groceries from REMA1000, a local store. And I got familiar with doors with code locks, self turning lights and drinkable water from the tap. Things that may be taken for granted but are incredible.

I was picked up by Jens Madsen , Business Development Manager, on Thursday morning to begin my project, we headed to the DSV Headquarters.

Jens gave me an excellent introduction on the daily routine at the office. He's got a great sense of humor and people skills.

We went over the International Project agenda for the first couple of weeks, the context of Solutions in Denmark and a Tour of the warehouse facilities in Hedehusene.

I also started delivering a couple bags of lollipops I brought from Mexico. I met Warehouses Director, Kim Storbank and Sales & BCM Director Per Hansen . Both very kind and friendly leaders. I would not meet Transport Director Tommy Steneman almost until the end of the project, but he was not the exception to a continued great impression from the Danish team.

I also had a close encounter with Group COO & Vice CEO Jens Lund at the kantine (cafeteria) during my month stay, but we just exchanged a quick "Hej!".

On my first day, I had the pleasure to meet Marcel Blomjous , Managing Director for Solutions Denmark. We had a meeting in detail about the Solutions Denmark strategy that I spoke about before. Marcel is a wonderful person and an amazing leader.

He spoke to me about values he holds important in his role as a manager, among those stood out that he believes in empowering others for the better, and specially women and minorities who deserve as much opportunities as any other. Using our privilege and ability to lift others up resonated a lot with me and that makes Marcel a great leader in my eyes.

Project Timeline.

To provide a structure to our international projects, the Program coordinators requested a set of elements which I compiled in a document containing: Scope, Timeline, Business Case, Project Execution and Next Steps. These were to be delivered at different points throughout the project, as well as weekly updates on my progress.

Please refer to the above timeline for a comprehensive view of my project plan and progress.

Process Review

To get a good idea of the different stakeholders, process flow and elements for the invoicing, I began by performing a process review with Sales, Contract Management and Operations during my first two weeks. This allowed me to understand the process flow, the inputs and the outputs.

While the Sales portion of the process was out of scope, I was made aware by Jens Madsen about the importance and effect that the developed rate sheet has on invoicing. And I included in my recommendations.

Contract Management, with the marvelous assistance from Jesper Pedersen and Daniel Egebjerg , shared many improvement suggestions that focused on standardizing the process and making it more efficient. They clarified their role and collaboration with operations on the monthly invoicing.

Jesper and Daniel were very helpful and played a vital role in my understanding of the process. They provided me with a lot of opportunities for improvement on the Master template, a key document during the execution of the invoicing.

Finally for my review I went to Hedeland 2, one of the warehouses in Hedehusene, were I talked to Site Manager Tim Madsen and his team about their experience with the process and about any concerns and recommendations they had. Team Lead Martin Thomsen, Team Lead Kim S?ndergaard , and Administrative Assistant Dovile Vitiene , and all colleagues at HE2 were welcoming, helpful, and open to answer my questions.

Changing the Scope

After my process review, as I mentioned, I saw the need to update and broaden the project scope.

While the original scope would have brought benefits in reducing errors and improving practices, it would have also just added a new task for the team and they would have not seen a more tangible effect.

There is an important constraint in this process. It is done monthly and it has to be completed within a day. Therefore it is decentralized throughout the different locations and team leads execute the invoicing for different customers.

By going to the Gemba and listening to the concerns of the team, and by applying the Lean principles it was clear that the current Master template could be improved to reduce the time taken for each invoice. This would have a big impact on the execution time and stakeholder satisfaction.

Therefore when I met with my project sponsor Lau J?rgensen , QHSE & Projects Manager, we discussed and agreed to update the scope. This was backed by the Program coordinators as well. To include auditing, but also process improvements, I made the scope a more general statement.

This was the updated scope and deliverables:

Within August 2023, implement improvements in the invoicing process through analysis and programming to increase efficiency and reduce errors.

The project has the following goals:

·?Enhance the efficiency of the Invoicing Master and its associated process.

·?Develop a template for annually auditing each customer invoicing.

·?Establish a documented process for invoicing and auditing.

Project Deliverables:

1.??? An optimized Invoicing Master integrated with automated input methods, increasing efficiency by minimizing manual interventions.

2.??? A yearly invoicing audit template, executed by contract managers to ensure invoice accuracy and alignment with contractual terms.

3.??? A comprehensive process instruction covering invoicing and auditing.        

With this in mind, I updated the Timeline and I prepared my Business Case.

Jutland Process Review

With the aim of understanding the processes throughout the division, I went to the other end of the country, from Zealand (Sj?lland) through Funen (Fyn) to Jutland (Jylland), the 3 regions of Denmark, and arrived in Kolding were I was met by my colleague and friend, fellow young professional, Project Manager Zsuzsa Luka , she received me with the warmest welcome and proceeded to show me all around the different locations we had in the vicinity.

After visiting the T1 and T3 locations it was clarified to me that most of the facilities in Kolding used a different method for invoicing. Therefore I could not gather further information from Operations.

Nevertheless, I was able to see some incredible solutions and processes within the different warehouses. This has been a good way of expanding my understanding of our logistics capabilities and pave the way for me to support similar implementations in the future.

Upon my return to Zealand after a weekend in Jutland I went to the closest warehouse to where I had been staying, the Roskilde warehouse, where I was warmly received by Quality Assurance Manager Lene Kehlet Engstr?m , and her QA team Emilie Pries and Jacob Wolfgang Atterdag .

Lene gave me a tour of the facility which contains mostly products from Pharma customers. Some of the rooms for Pharma are really, really cold!

After the tour, I was able to touch base with the local Operations team regarding their experience with and use of the Master template to develop monthly invoicing. I received good feedback from Site Manager Jan Rudkj?bing and Supervisor Kenneth Flies .

I had been working on improvements to this template. And from this visit I was able to include new changes needed by the team. I showed my work to Kenneth and Jan, they were pleased with the idea and I took their advice to continue building on it.

Invoicing Master Update

The Master template was a work in progress since the second week and all throughout the project, although I had slotted focus time for it during the beginning of week 3 per the Timeline.

I wanted any changes I proposed for the project to be built upon the current way of working to facilitate adoption by a numerous amount of colleagues throughout Denmark.

I made use of my knowledge in Visual Basic for Applications and the Microsoft Suite to make updates, and also to filter outputs with support from a Large Language Model, in accordance with Group IT Compliance guidelines.

These improvements were, among other programming fail safes and features:

1. Replaced lock and unlock buttons that if left unlocked would cause missed information for the invoice. I created new insert, hide and unhide buttons to directly perform editing tasks that automatically ensured no information was lost.
2. Created a method with 2 new sheets that allows the user to upload data for hours worked and quickly allocate it to the customer invoice. This previously had to be done manually on a different document.
3. Created 4 new excel databases to manage Waste, Packaging, Scrap and Materials invoices. These can be quickly allocated to the customer invoice. Previously these had to be managed manually more than once.
4. Created a method with a new sheet to paste SQL data from the Warehouse Management System (WMS) which could be linked through references to each customer invoice, reducing execution time.
5. Modified an Upload sheet button that automatically generates a CSV file used to create the final invoice in SAP, saving some extra time as it was previously generated with more steps.

Fun fact, I struggled at different moments with the coding because of the difference between American and European decimal symbol separators. While in Mexico and the US we use the comma on the CSV and a dot for decimal, in Europe we use a semicolon on the CSV and a comma for decimal.

Quick advice, if you'd like to automatically generate a CSV file using VBA. When using the .SaveAs method, make sure to set the Local parameter to True so that the program dynamically uses the local computer's setting for the separators.

Sub Example()
... 'Previous Code
Workbook.SaveAs FileName:=Example FileFormat:=xlCSV Local:=True
... 'Further Code
End Sub        

The resulting benefits of these changes are shown further in this article.

I want to give special thanks to Kim S?ndergaard from HE2 for helping me make a final test to perform a time study. It provided the baseline for the calculation of the impact of the project. As well as thanks to Jesper, Daniel, Dovile, Emilie, and Diana Kaczmarek , among other colleagues, for providing important insights and support throughout my work with the Master.

I also want to thank Peter Tuthill , former young professional in Denmark, for giving me the clues and a rundown prior to my travel abroad. His insights were very important for my understanding of the process and the template.

Invoicing Audit Development

The main source of information on the process flow came from CMs Jesper and Daniel. I needed the Audit to be comprehensive so I divided it in four sections to cover the template creation, its execution, its results and historical review.

After creating it I reviewed it with the CMs and received positive feedback. With a final review from Lau, my project sponsor, I finished the first version.

This audit is to be done by the team periodically with a minimum frequency of once a year but without limit to what the team considers appropriate.

It highlights differences in the steps of the process and ensures that they have been properly followed. This will allow the teams to more effectively manage discrepancies and reduce their losses.

Invoicing Procedure Development

I divided the procedure in 3 main stages:

1. Invoice Development.
2. Invoice Execution.
3. Invoice Review.

This covers the creation, usage and audit of the invoice. And it also covers all the changes made to the Master, as well as the way the Audit should be done.

This way there is a standardized process that can be used to train any new colleague on the invoicing and can also be consulted by the current team.

The procedure also included the roles and responsibilities of 5 stakeholders and a clear process flow diagram that highlights each of them at every stage.

I received a final approval from Lau for the first version of the procedure.

Results!

When performing acceptance tests for the Master, the time went from 22 min per invoice to 10 min per invoice.

The projections for the benefits of the project are:

1. 60% average reduction in time to perform the invoice.
2. 210 hours saved per year on the invoicing process.
3. Over 10,000 USD saved per year in white collar hours.
4. Unknown savings because of error detection and prevention. (Ranging the thousands or hundreds of thousands of USD)
5. Improved team communication.
6. Clearer process and easier training.

My final presentation to the local team, program coordination and my manager was a success. I was able to showcase all of the above benefits and the process that made them come about.

Now it's only a matter of implementation by the local team and they can start reaping those benefits.

Aftermath

I shall continue to support the DK team if they have any questions regarding my improvements, and I hope that it can be fully implemented soon.

This project helped me improve my approach to different coding problems, as well as increase my understanding of the invoicing process in general. I got to know a lot of different locations, ways of working, departments and technologies.

This project allowed me to leverage my experience with programming, lean six sigma, problem solving tools, continuous improvement and so much more. I am grateful to have made a positive impact for the team.

I also had the perfect opportunity to connect with so many colleagues across our organization. I could not possibly include them all, so many names to learn in such a short amount of time but I've done my best. They all know they can count on me, and I know I can count on them.

Vi ses! (See you!)

At every level, I was always met with kindness, open and honest communication, the Danish people have a wonderful professional culture and they made me feel comfortable and part of the team.

I am just grateful for the experience and I hope we can meet again soon!

Thank you for reaching all the way over here, this was a work heavy newsletter, and while I couldn't dive into the more technical aspects of the project too much or show the end products in all their glory, I do hope it gives you some idea of my project's challenges and my professional experience in Denmark.

Please stay tuned for the next month's newsletter, where I will dive into less work related topics of my month in Denmark and focus more on the people that I met, the places that I visited, the cultural richness, infrastructure and gastronomy of this beautiful country. And how all of this has influenced me in a professional and personal way.

Until next time!