I visited a client the other day and they were looking sheepish when I asked them how their new process was working. They'd changed the process . They thought I would have been disappointed. The new process was even better; why would I have been disappointed? If a process stays still then it probably isn't being given any attention. Processes should evolve over time if they can be improved upon (and most can). So, as I told my client, if you aren't changing your processes over time then it means that you probably aren't looking at them (objectively) on a regular basis. I should finish this post off by stating that changing and innovating your processes needs to be done in a controlled manner. Changing parts of a process without a thought out approach can lead to disaster, but not looking at them at all - that's nearly as bad! Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business perfor

Drive Down Costs, Improve Performance and Engage Your Teams Price - $37.00 USD Available for immediate download. If you are looking for a way to get your staff more involved with the Lean manufacturing projects you have planned for your business then this waste walking reduction workshop kit is ideal. Combining a practical approach with a suite of quick to use templates, the waste reduction workshop is easy to use and available for immediate download. Are your Lean projects going the way you had hoped? Waste reduction and engaging your teams is at the heart of the Lean approach to business improvement. This kit is a collection of tools, a presentation, instructions and a workbook that you can download via this site immediately after payment. The kit is based on a successful workshop series delivered by Giles Johnston, the creator of this product, to manufacturing companies of different shapes and sizes. Giles is a Chartered Engineer who has a background in Production Ma

Many of my clients when I have first started working with them seem concerned with messy looking improvement projects . That's a natural reaction on two counts. Firstly, we don't want messy projects on the whole. We want to have neat delineated projects with clear steps, milestones and outcomes. This doesn't often happen. Secondly, projects don't often unveil their full range of tasks until we start taking action. We may be able to plan / predict the steps required for a project but unless we have done the same project before we end up having to guess the steps. Please plan your projects properly, don't miss this step out. But be prepared for the common reality that your later steps will be replaced as you go, once new knowledge is available to you. When you look from the outside in (whether a business, project or something else) it usually looks organised, tidy and planned. When you look from the inside out it can look chaotic, confused and difficult.

For those of you who don't have a copy of our ' Kamishibai Boards ' book, you can download it for free over the next two weeks via Smashwords. Use the link below to visit Smashwords, where it is available on multiple formats. Kamishibai Boards eBook Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

The other week I was quizzed about ‘what are your top three tips to streamline an office process ?’ It’s a good question. First, I said, was to create a top level map of the process. Knowing the major steps in the process and the interfaces between the steps is vital to improve the flow of the process. Secondly, establish meaningful performance measures throughout the process. Are key steps starting on time? What is the lead time of the bottleneck operation? Some measures can be yes and no measures, some may be more quantifiable. Know how you process is performing so that the results don’t come as a shock. Thirdly, design a routine that supports points one and two. Discipline and routine can make the designed benefits of a process come to life. Each and every day certain activities need to take place. Make sure they do! I’m sure that you can think of additional activities that you could undertake, but these are my top three. I could think of more complete answers w

Root cause analysis is a common phrase in industry. You have a problem and you want to get to the core of the issue and determine a proper course of action. You want to resolve the problem once and for all. There are many popular tools, including ‘5 Why’, but I keep finding businesses that stop short of the real problem. If you have experienced root cause problem solving then you will be familiar with the idea of symptoms. The first levels of discovery yield only symptoms of the real problem. If you keep digging and poking then you eventually have a real discovery. By real I mean a blinding flash of the obvious (obvious now at least!). When you get stuck in root cause problem solving you need to go away and get some more information. You need to go and ask the questions that will give you the right answers. Don’t be afraid of asking the foolish questions, you will find that they aren’t foolish if you persevere. Get the facts and get the answers. When you have a good answer

I was quizzed the other day about how to make a working day effective , and stop people from working late into the evening. It was a good question and it got us talking about the essentials of a working day. There are certainly some tasks that need to be completed each and every day. There are also tasks that need to be managed over a slightly longer period of time to match your available capacity. (OK, sometimes you do need to flex your capacity, but I am talking about the longer term here). If you know the essentials then you can devise a simple 'exit' from your daily working. The notion is that if you can tick these items off your list each and every day then you can wrap up the working day more effectively. If you can do that then you have a good chance of making the working days and weeks more effective. Have you got an end of day routine? Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

To coincide with the revised free report I have updated the presentation on Slideshare. An embedded copy is below. Improving on time delivery from gilesjohnston Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

Recently I was asked for my comments on time management whilst working with an Operations Management team. I thought it would be worthwhile sharing my notes on this blog. Time expands and contracts to fill the time available – schedule the important tasks early into your day. Time management is not just about where and when, but what and why. Deciding what tasks will give you the biggest payback in terms of results needs to be considered when planning your day / routines. Hence, know what is important and what is trivial. Planning – what needs to be done in what sequence. Scheduling – when the planned items needs to be done. Routines yield consistency and help you to be proactive in your role. Important and difficult tasks should be tackled first.* Effectiveness first, then efficiency. Once you have the right tasks you can then find a better way to do the tasks to free up time. Once the routines are complete you can move onto (mini) projects, whether this is managing

After feedback from readers and clients I have updated my Key Performance Indicators book. Rather than go for a 'second edition' it has been revamped with a stronger focus on process improvement (compared to solely business performance management). You can get your copy (or download the first 10% free) by visiting this link: Designing KPIs to Drive Process Improvement Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

It is becoming more and more common that I hear the phrase 'lean management'. This is not as a replacement for the phrase 'lean manufacturing' but I feel it is a realisation for many people that the tools and principles that have been applied to many business' factory facilities over the years can be readily applied to other areas of a business. As you know, lean is all about the balance of value adding activities within a business against the non-value adding (or waste generating) activities that are also present. Lean strives to engage people to drive out the waste present in their processes and develop more efficient and effective ways for them to serve their customers. The supporting departments that serve the production aspect of the business (whether it is in manufacturing, services, projects or something else) need to be as efficient and as effective as possible, and you can see the shift in the approach of many businesses who are embracing this way

If you've read my book On Time Delivery you will have come across the 'Big Brain' award I gave to one of my team members for his application of continuous improvement. He didn't use fancy techniques or methods he just used some common sense and stopped accepting the way things were. No longer did he tolerate the capacity problems in his departments. No longer did he accept the number of breakdowns that were occurring. No longer did he live with the long tool changeover times. Sometimes it is the smaller things that we can change that can have the greatest impact, and sometimes getting people to get involved is one of the hardest tasks. A really simple way to get people involved, and great if you are starting any kind of lean manufacturing orientated project, is waste walking . Go for a walk through your business and spot the opportunities. Waste walking is something I get emailed about quite often and so our waste walking kit is now availab

Now available at Amazon It seems like books are similar to buses, nothing for a while and then two come together! The bank holiday here in England has been put to good effect and the other book I have been working on for quite some time is now available. Titled ' On Time Delivery ' it is an account of a real lean manufacturing story from a time when I was a Production Manager. It charts some of the highs and lows of trying to sort out the on time delivery problems we were having and my journey to achieve the performance goals I had set for the business. It is available directly from Amazon for the Kindle reading app / device or from most other online e-book retailers (you may have to wait a few weeks from the date of this blog post for iBooks, Kobo, Nook and Sony stores). You can also get the right format via Smashwords . Anyway, if you choose to buy it I hope you enjoy the journey. Learning points are plentiful within the book, so you should be able to f

My new book on a systematic approach to developing future state maps is now available on the Amazon Kindle platform and all other major ebook retailers. The book was written due to several clients having trouble trying to agree on what a good future state map for their business processes would be. This book shares with you a step by step approach to generating and evaluating future state options so that you can build the optimal solution for your business. The book is called 'Optimised Future State' and can be viewed on Amazon.com by clicking on the link below, or on image of the front cover. View Optimised Future State on Amazon . Now available on Kindle and other ebook readers If you are stuck with your future state mapping and want a more rational and systematic approach then check out the book today and put the simple and straightforward method into action. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. If you buy a copy and leave a review

One of the common discussions I end up in is around lead time reduction, reducing the total amount of time it takes for an order (or a project, or an enquiry, or a complaint etc...) to move through a business. Obviously a faster and slicker turnaround can be of significant interest to your customers and can help to reduce the costs associated with that process. A simple way of looking at this problem is to think of your business process as being similar to a relay race. Can you remember those from your school days? If you do, you will remember that in order to win you had to avoid dropping the baton, have smooth changeovers and run quickly in-between changeovers. There we go then, a perfect recipe for lead time reduction. In my experience, for businesses with multiple departments, the fastest way to improve overall lead time is to find out where the baton is being dropped. This might take the form of in trays that hide work, unclear specifications in different departments leadin

Kamishibai Boards from gilesjohnston Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

There are many brilliant business improvement techniques that exist today. Some take little prior knowledge of these ways of working in order to produce excellent effects in your business. Imagine selecting an appropriate handful of these tools, making them accessible to your teams and then watching them yield tangible benefits. Often we get too caught up in trying to do things ‘right’. We don’t have to follow all of the instructions, we don’t have to use every single tool in the tool kit and we don’t have to do things because someone else told us to. We can take what makes sense to us, we can do what we can right now and we can make a system that is ours. Imperfect action can get good results, and once you get some results you can always go back and improve your system until it is perfect (whatever that means!). Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. Business Process Re-Engineering , our guide on Amazon Kindle, can give you a jump start with

During a business improvement project there comes a point where we need to choose what solutions we will implement to achieve the desired results that we are seeking. In many cases the solution is pre-determined before we start an improvement project. Whether this is a decree from a higher authority within the business, or an expectation of the people involved, there is usually a benefit in generating and selecting other options prior to making the improvement a reality. I have been involved in many projects where there is only one course of action laid out. After some probing I can often find that this course of action is not the definitive course of action, but the first course of action that was thought up. This article looks at generating and selecting solutions for your improvement projects. As you embark upon an area of your business that needs to be improved there is likely to be a number of factors that you could include in your potential solutions. Factors could include p

PDCA has been around for a long time, it is central to business improvement philosophies and rightly so. PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check, Act. It is also commonly known as the Deming cycle after the hugely influential Dr W. Edwards Deming. The purpose of this article is to focus on the A, the Act, portion of the cycle as I feel this is one of the most neglected elements of this wonderful approach. Whilst most businesses are good at the Plan stage and fairly good at the Do activity many fail at both the Check and the Act elements. Failure to take advantage of these other two parts of the cycle steals the victory of improvement away from us and reduces our motivation to attempt other improvement projects in the future. The Check stage is straightforward; did our intended plan of action yield the correct results? The answer you give will be either a yes or a no, but the important thing to do after this is to clarify to what degree we are away from our desired goal. PDCA only w

Does your team go looking for improvement opportunities? One of the central pillars of the lean movement is the idea of waste in a business. Not the rubbish that we find in bins kind of wastes, but the types of activity that we undertake as part of our jobs that doesn't really benefit the end customer. You probably recall these types of waste from posters in your business, or from courses that you have been on, they are: Defects Overproduction Transportation Waiting Inventory Motions  Processes The ‘7 wastes’ is a simple way to communicate the idea of removing the waste within a business and it helps you to identify specific areas for improvement. However, as Lean is a people centric approach to business improvement, there is another waste not on the above list. The 8th waste is known as ‘ untapped human potential ’ and means that the people who work in your business know all kinds of things that could improve the business, but aren't telling you. They wi