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TRANSACT IONS DPS GROUP ACQUIRE BELGIAN ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY F4PE DPS Group , the Irish engineering and project management group, has acquired F4PE , a Belgian specialised engineering group which provides high quality services in the field of clean rooms and process facilities for production and laboratory facilities. The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. This is the first acquisition by DPS Group in Continental Europe, although the group already has existing operations in Belgium and the Netherlands. DPS has also made a series of acquisitions in the United States in the past five years.

F4PE offers services ranging frombasic design, through full commissioning and qualification of complete facilities. With a group of 35 highly specialised engineers and designers, F4PE supports clients in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sector with their facility investments. The company has a turnover of approximately €5 million. DPS COO Brian Donohoe said the group’s existing operations in Belgiumwill be integrated with those of F4PE, and the combined operations will have 70 personnel serving clients in the pharma and biotech sectors. “The combination of F4PE’s local presence and engineering and construction management

capability, combined with DPS Group’s Centre of Excellence offices in Dublin and Cork, will enable us to significantly improve the service we offer clients in Belgium. I’m particularly delighted that all of the F4PE management team and senior managers will be remaining with the expanding company under the direction of DPS-F4PE Managing Director Alain Ruys,” Donohoe said. “Expanding in Europe is a core element in our strategy and acquiring an excellent business like F4PE, with its excellent management and staff, fits in perfectly with the strategy of having strong local engineering capabilities to better serve our clients,” Donohoe added.

CHAD FROST, from page 11

waste. By identifying the wastes in the process, you can begin to improve the flow of the process and thereby its overall ef- ficiency. A recent example of poor flow was identified when observing a client’s process for routing patients for lab work during an urgent care visit. The stakeholder team value-stream mapped the various steps of the process and found a considerable amount of waiting and travel wastes were experienced by the patient, resulting in a much longer-than-necessary stay. The stakeholders focused on the identified steps to see which ones could be removed entirely and which could be reduced significantly by managing tasks/flow differently and making architectural changes to the future layout during the 3P space planning exercise. The client was able to reduce the wastes considerably and defined other areas for potential improve- ment and efficiency gain who were supporting this process as well. 3)Inventory/overall extra space. We ask our clients this ques- tion before launching a LEAN-based approach: “What should be the top three priorities of this space planning exercise?” The dominating response is always “Adding more space!” Believe it or not, in many of the LEAN-based space planning projects we have done with clients, we have found that more than enough space exists in the current layout! To understand how this happens, many departments do not have steady growth plans, but rather grow based on sudden increases in demand or by the rare instance of investment. The result of this approach is a patchwork of processes, spaces, and inventory closets that were forced to fit versus creating spaces to support the original process. During the iterative 3P approach of the LEAN-based design process, EAPC collaborates with the stakeholder teams to create mul- tiple versions of the final layout. We then ask the teams to compress the space to help reduce the wastes of travel and motion and to help them visually see how much space is left over from the original layout. Immediately, the client sees the benefits of this process because in most cases a new building isn’t needed due to all the additional space that is generated during the planning process. By using a LEAN-based space planning approach, the client experiences significant capital cost savings with a remodel versus a new building and the increase in efficiency enhances patient experience and satisfaction. CHAD FROST is LEAN design specialist at EAPC. He can be reached at 701.775.3077 or at chad.frost@eapc.net.

patient is not willing to pay for during their interaction with our client. It’s a tough concept to get the client to understand because they view the process from their point of view rather than the patient’s point of view. Once you switch this process, then you begin to ask questions like, “Why do we do this and what value does it have to our patients?” If the answers are, “We’ve always done it that way” and/or “I’m not sure,” then it’s possible you have defined a waste in your process that needs to be reviewed and possibly removed, or lessened im- mediately. A recent example of waste was identified when observing a client’s process which involves archiving lab samples that are performed multiple times a day. The placement of the archive fridge and associated computer required to archive the samples was a significant walking distance for most of the lab technicians. The excessive movement of samples between process steps is called travel waste. Once the team identi- fied this waste, they were able to implement changes to the process to significantly reduce the travel waste and increase utilization of fridge space within their own work area. The solution, defined by the team, will increase productivity and reduce the turn-around time to complete these services for the patients/providers. 2)Efficient flow/space patterns/circulation. LEAN focuses on the flow of a process to determine where it stops and starts and where it flows smoothly without interruption. The overall efficiency of a process is highly dependent upon the flow of the product or service through the process. If the process involves multiple stops, starts, and waiting for the delivery of the product or service to the next step, then the efficiency will be poor for this specific process. Most interruptions to the flow of a process are created by “Try-storming utilizes an iterative approach where the stakeholders of the process ‘try’ multiple layouts to determine how they will address the flow issues identified during the LEAN observation phase and ensure waste does not enter back into their process.”

THE ZWEIG LETTER August 27, 2018, ISSUE 1262

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