Skip to main content

The rough comes with the smooth - especially when it comes to improving on time delivery

I often get asked the question "am I on the right tracks with my improvement journey?"

Whether this question is posed by new clients, old clients, email subscribers or via my websites it doesn't matter.

At times we can all feel lost with our improvement projects.

Sometimes our improvement journey can feel like it is win after win; we witness the results we are wanting and the performance of our business moves in the right direction.

Other times our journey can feel like it is stuck and stalled. Conversations go wrong, improvements seem like a waste of time and we lose confidence (hopefully temporarily!).

This is the point of this blog post - this is entirely normal!

 You have the ability to control the plan that you create. The outcomes are, unfortunately, not entirely up to you:

  • A skillfully worded request could be mis-interpreted.
  • A genius plan could be executed back to front because of staff mis-conceptions you hadn't known about before.
  • The information that you based your decision on was mis-understood by the person compiling the data.
  • Or, people just don't like the options you are presenting to them.
There are loads of ways that your improvement journey can go of course, and it is easy to get despondent about how the rate of change is shaping up.

There are, however, two things that you can do when this happens:
  1. You can look at the facts of the situation and, knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you can re-plan your approach (if that is required).
  2. You can acknowledge that if continuous improvement was easy then the changes would have happened already and you can decide to keep going!
I empathise with this conflict, taking place in our minds, as I have been through the same issue time and time again. There is probably no better example of this than when I was an Operations Manager running the manufacturing side of a factory that consistently delivered late and had a really long lead time (and an irate customer base!).

I could have left the company after a number of improvement projects had failed to deliver their results, but I resolved 'not on my watch!'

After a few months the signs of change were evident, but not without some difficult conversations, a lot of unhappy customers, and dis-gruntled peers in the process. A few months after this we were increasing our sales (based on our delivery performance), had a motivated workforce and a legion of happy customers.

If you find yourself in a similar predicament then you might find my short book 'On Time Delivery' to be useful; it covers the highs and lows of that particular journey. If you are feeling a little lost and deflated with your own on time delivery improvement journey then it might just give you a few more ideas that you can apply to your own business (or at worst make you feel that your own issues are not uncommon!).




PURCHASE NOW

I hope that if you are feeling a little lost with your improvement projects that you decide to keep your resolve and push forward with the refining of your improvement plans and efforts.

Also, don't forget to look back once in a while and see how far you have travelled!

Giles


About the author
Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes.
Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement toolkit.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just  ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it rea
Read more

Take the pressure off! Using the Y-curve with your Kaizen improvements

Do you feel under pressure when you have to make changes happen in your business? It can be scary when we try something that we have never done before. I remember thinking to myself 'how on Earth am I going to figure this out?' on many occasions. I think the last time was a few weeks ago! Years on from becoming reasonable at the art of change I am still faced with the same dilemma. It is scary and it is clear to me why so many people shy away from making change happen. It is natural to get stuck in this oscillation. On one hand you need to make change happen; the business needs the improvement benefits. On the other hand you don't want to screw up... Last week I was talking to a young engineer that I am mentoring. He was paralysed. Changes were not happening at all. There was always some early promise with his projects and then, as completion (and judgement day) loomed, progress would evaporate. The engineer asked me for my views on this  during a recent conversati
Read more

Do you need a burst of improvement ideas for your business?

If you haven’t created your improvement action plan for 2020 yet then I have something for you. I have just completed my latest project – The CI Focus Tool . This Android App is now available on Google Play and provides a simple method for generating as many effective improvement ideas as you need. This is the same basic method that I describe in my book Effective Continuous Improvement  and is now available as a simple to use app. In essence it is a brainstorming focus tool. Press the focus button and you will be presented with a random continuous improvement focus. Brainstorm ideas around this focus with your team (whilst the timer is running) and there you go – a number of great ideas for you to prioritise and implement. The reason that this works so well is because of the focus. When your business runs out of its immediate problems to fix you need a different strategy. Very focused brainstorming helps you break past this problem and configuring the app to meet t
Read more