Good to see that one of my clients has had a story about them published on the bdaily website. I was involved in delivering part of the business improvement work that the story refers to. Read the story here . Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

Impedance is one of those good words that, when applied to the context of business improvement, you can quickly find ideas to improve how your business operates. For example... What gets in the way? What obstacles are there in your business that stop you from being as fast as you can, or delivering your product or service to the highest quality levels? How you do make it difficult to do business? Does your business prevent your customers from doing business? Is there any way that you can re-design how your customers interact with your business so that their life becomes easier and you can deliver more products and services for them in the future? What stops good ideas from taking effect? If you are trying to implement changes to the way that you work what gets in the way? Can you better understand how changes are stopped (or impeded) and then design a different way for your business to behave in this area? If you find certain activities in your business aren't happening

I question I often get asked is "does all of this business improvement activity work outside of manufacturing?" The answer is yes, and the charity I am a Trustee of got in the press because of it. I was even interviewed for the article. Read the article here. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

One of the most common phrases you hear when you first embark on improvement project work is 'we've done all of this before'. Have you had this said to you? If you have then there is a simple antidote to the situation, finding a 'statue of change'. Find something in your organisation that doesn't work and that fits in to the remit of the change you are trying to make. Then, put all of your efforts into making sure that this specific change takes effect and works. Sometimes this requires extra effort to ensure that everything runs smoothly. The key to making this strategy work however is to make sure that the change is visible. The change needs to be the statue referred to in the title, a monument for everyone to see that change really can happen. If you are finding that your business change projects are being faced with resistance then it may be worthwhile  to consider a 'statue of change' for your business. Find the one thing that every

5S is a much used Lean tool that is often seen as a good launching point for business transformation projects. In many cases however, its application into the office environment is rather lacking . This is a shame because it can offer some really good benefits for the business who does embrace the five steps (sort, set, shine, standards and sustain) fully. For example, when you implement 5S on your computer server files become easier to find and time that was wasted trying to get the information that you need is now used for more important tasks (plus it's less frustrating!). Physical files and information are better organised and clutter in the workplace reduces. Again, this makes retrieving information quicker, trip hazards reduce and morale can improve. Also, if you run some form of software to manage your business (such as a CRM system, or MRP/ERP system) then having this same mentality with the data in the system will allow you to improve the quality of the business

'Business Process Improvement' is a practical how to guide based on the author's experience of helping businesses to improve their operational performance. It is aimed at the person whose job it is to make operational and on time delivery improvements happen. During the time he has worked as a business improvement consultant, the author, Giles Johnston, has identified a number of approaches that work for his wide range of clients time and time again. Different clients, different businesses, different needs… but similar approaches.. ‘Business Process Improvement’ outlines these approaches in a simple way that makes them easy to apply to your business. If you are short of time and need to quickly make tangible changes in your business, then this practical guide book is for you. Shorter lead times, improved on time delivery performance and less fire fighting are just around the corner. Click here to view on Amazon.com. Smartspeed Consulting Li

I heard a statement recently about how SMED was something you do to ‘polish’ a process, after you have done everything else you need to do to that production process. When I worked through the experience part of gaining my Engineering Chartership I had never heard of the term SMED, it was just something you did to streamline a process – to remove the ‘dead time’ when changing over. Since the lean movement has grown (where I first heard the term SMED) we understand better the need for flexibility within production environments and how quick changeovers can really help. As you can imagine, I disputed the statement that SMED was something you do at the end. I’m sure that you agree that it is just good working practice. If you aren’t familiar with SMED it is a really useful method for taking the work out of a changeover and minimising the time where the process is not running at full speed. A common approach is to: 1 - List all of the activities required to changeover.