I have just finished reading a book from the 1980s about MRPII implementations, something I found on Ebay a couple of months ago (and something generally hard to come across to buy). One of the recurring themes in the book was about moving away from informal systems (and workarounds) towards making a formal system work. I had to check the date of the book... It's funny how the principles of production and logic are timeless, as are the ways in which people attempt to override them! Giles Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

Once we have set up our new processes of working, and have developed our action plans to make the improvements we want in our businesses then it is now time for us to do the hard work. Many times I have seen brilliant plans, and excellent production systems, fail due to a lack of discipline and hard work. As much I like to help people to develop easier ways working there are just some jobs that require a degree of 'grind'. It is one thing to establish and define the daily routines required to make a business function or process work perfectly, but it is another entirely to establish those habits and make the plans a reality. If you are in the position where you have a fantastic process and yet it is not yielding the results you want it to generate, then it might be time to look at how you support the key players in your team and reinforce the message of what is required to happen when. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

When you are embarking on process improvement activities don't just accept the same old way of working that you always have. If you fail to challenge the things that don't work correctly, you will find that you are unable to make the level of progress you are surely capable of making. Tasks in the business that are there to help work around problems in the system need to be challenged head-on. This may require some root cause analysis work and a dash of creativity when you are undertaking this work. Ensuring that people who operate various parts of your business processes understand the idea of closed loop feedback is essential. We can fix our problems if we don't bury our heads in the sand. Many people in business will accept the way things are rather than get uncomfortable and challenge the way that things are happening. This is especially apparent when people operate computer software systems such as MRP/ERP. Quite often the designers of the software understand your

It was really interesting for me to watch the women's 4 x 100m relay race last night, from a business process improvement perspective. For years I have referred to the way that a business flows work between its functions as a relay race, with smooth transitions being the order of the day. Last night's race was superb to watch, with a flurry of legs and arms with an almost slow motion passing of the baton occurring at the end of each leg of the race. Business can be frenetic, but the passing of work between functions of a business can still be smooth, timely, appropriate and of a high quality. By focussing on the handovers in your business you can reduce the lead time it takes your business to deliver it's products and services and this can improve both the customer service you offer and the profit you retain. Taking this lesson from the American team is certainly worth thinking about. Giles P.S. A video of the race can be seen here -  http://www.bbc

When you are engaging in process simplification, or process re-engineering, then having some data to hand is absolutely pivotal to the work you are doing. You do not need to have full unit cost information available before you do some form of business process re-engineering, but having no data whatsoever is a recipe for disaster when it comes to doing this kind of improvement work. I've seen on numerous occasions businesses attempt to do business process re-engineering when they have no tangible evidence to work on and validate these decisions. If this is you then please stop! Take the time to go and gather some data, to get some facts and figures around your business processes. You will save a lot of time in the long term if you go and get this information, too many businesses go full steam ahead without having any facts to back up the conversations that ensue once this process get started. If you're struggling to work out what kind of data you need then come up

Is your business improvement like painkillers or vitamin pills? One of the obvious things to do when you're practicing process improvement techniques is to find out what approach you are taking. Are you proactive or reactive? 'Aches and pains' in your business are a great way of finding areas to focus proactively upon. Many people ignore them and do not look for the root causes behind the headaches in their business, leaving them unable to find a good way to improve the business' performance until it gets too late. Many times improvement activities are seen as some sort of remedy when a part of the business is broken, akin to a broken leg, but it doesn't have to be like this. If you don't currently have a 'broken leg' then you can view business process improvement activity as vitamin pills, a way to improve your day-to-day productivity without having to wait for some kind of major problem to occur and instigate change. So a decision has

If you're involved with process improvement projects and are finding a lot of problems coming your way as you try to deliver your projects don't worry, this is part and parcel of improvement projects.  The is a great Chinese proverb that comes to mind when we look at this and it's “you can't polish a gem without friction”. You will encounter problems, you will encounter issues and you will encounter things don't quite work right the first time. If you approach your business process improvement projects in a step-by-step way, then you will find that your projects will proceed and will get to their intended destination. You will realise the benefits and you will complete your projects. As long as you continue to be logical, sequential, and consistent you will find your business improvement activities will pay off. The ‘plan do check act’ process is wonderful in this instance because things do not always go ahead as planned. If you find you're strugglin

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