Something that I've noticed when businesses are getting involved with process mapping is that they can spend an awfully long time mapping and not reaping many rewards. The insights you can gain from mapping the low level detail of a business can be incredibly useful, but the amount of effort and time required to map everything at this level can often be a waste of resources. A different approach that can be taken is to conduct a brief top level map of the business first and then use this to highlight areas of concern. In many cases problems with a business process reside at the top level and are the result of the way the business processes link together rather than how the individual steps work. Once the top level issues have been identified the process steps that are causing problems can be mapped in more detail. The areas that do not currently cause any significant distractions (unit costs aren't too high, quality is fine etc...) can be left alone until a time whe

The On Time Delivery Improvement forum on LinkedIn is now open and if you are interested in discussing practical approaches to improving your OTIF or DSA then please join us online. The link for the forum is: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/On-Time-Delivery-Improvement-4419220/about Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

In the course of our working days we receive tasks to complete that can appear to be bigger than usual. If we add this to our already busy work schedules then it is quite normal for us to feel overwhelmed. This overwhelm usually manifests itself as procrastination and our services and projects are then put at risk of not being delivered on time. There are two simple remedies for this problem. The first approach is to not commit to the completion of the task until we have understood (or estimated) how much work is involved and planned out how we will approach the task. This process does not need to take long and can be done in a matter of moments once we get the hang of quickly evaluating what needs to be done and how much time it requires. Often the task is not as big as it was first thought. The second approach, which is linked to the first, is to break down the task into its various elements and then use these tiny fragments to help to get progress started and to make schedulin

A common phrase I hear, and you probably hear it too, is that of 'this won't work - our business is different'. The nuances of a business are different, and the combination of people, products, services, locations etc.. do make a business different. However, the various business improvement methodologies available can be applied to all types of businesses. The key is to see the commonality and adjust your approach to the method accordingly. All businesses who suffer from poor on time delivery have the same variables to play with. They all have a limited supply of resources, they have capacity constraints, they have supplier lead times, changing customer demands and bumps in the road to contend with. If your on time delivery performance is suffering and you find yourself, or the people in your business, stating that 'we're different, so that won't work' then it might be time to step back from the day to day busyness and consider the generic elements and

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Takt time (or cycle time) is a term that is very rarely understood outside of engineering circles, but can apply to different businesses who need to improve their business processes. The reason for writing this post is to help people who approach their business improvement with no real objectives other than to be better than they currently are. When continuous improvement approaches are used in isolation there is sometimes a lack of understanding about how good  an improvement needs to be in order to serve the business from the perspective of profit and customer service. Sometimes we pat ourselves on the back when we make improvements, but the improvement might not go far enough. Calculating takt time is a simple approach that divides the amount of demand into the available time. For example, if you need to handle three enquiries every hour, then that means that the task (nominally) should be designed to be no longer than 20 minutes. Obviously this example assumes that there is n

When we decide to make improvements to our business, the number of options available to us can seem overwhelming. Anyone who has looked into the Lean Transformation toolbox will remember how they felt when they first saw the full range of methods and techniques. However, there is a very simple way of deciding which tools will work best and that is to ask yourself whether the way your business operates lives up to the brand you have designed for it and the image you wish to project to your customers. To put this into perspective let me tell you briefly about some work I did with one of my clients. They were under pressure from their customers to improve their performance, particularly with respect to on time deliveries, and were about to embark in some Value Stream Mapping activities. At the point that I came to support the business there was already a long shopping list of methods, problems and potential improvements available for review. The problem was that after some analysis the