Sometimes our business improvement projects feel like we’re not making enough of a change, but what if there was a simple method to determine just how much of a change we needed to make in order to make our processes competitive?  By using some basic facts and figures we can determine exactly how much of a shift we need to make to our processes, and ultimately guide our thinking to create the right degree of change.  This booklet, written by an experienced business consultant, gives you a step by step guide on how to determine the key inputs to your business process improvement design. By using takt time as the basis for the direction you will identify the right amount of change required for your business. Click here to view on Amazon.com. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

Over time standards often drop. This can affect all manner of things within your business, from customer service, to quality records, and more. There is an interesting insight to this called 'broken window theory' ( Wilson and Kelling ), where windows were seen to be broken on derelict buildings, and as it was seen as OK (i.e. no one was prosecuted) then everyone else joined in. Eventually all of the windows were smashed out, by people who normally wouldn't get involved. How does this manifest in your business? Do people see others who don't tow the line and complete the necessary actions / disciplines without corrective actions being taken? Do they then follow suit? A good example of this going wrong in a manufacturing business is with data entries into an MRPII system (or the routines around the system). A failure to provide the right information, or inputs, can create all kinds of chaos. I see many businesses where the users put up with the chaos and cre

Projects often take longer than expected, but sometimes it is us who are creating the delays. Stalling the implementation however might not always be in the interest of everyone who is involved. Sure there will be teething problems, but this is natural and can bring a whole raft of benefits when encountered. During the infancy of a project / new way of working there will be things that won't work as you would expect. If the planning of the implementation was done thoroughly then you will be expecting to see a certain number of these types of problems and they will get resolved. When we resolve these issues our skills improve and we get better as individuals and as a team. There will always be bits missing from a project plan, but as long as the important things have been covered and planned for then the small bits that aren't crucial can be coped with as they arise. If the pros outweigh the cons of making the change then perhaps it's time to go for it. Smar

Many people hate meetings. There are so many meetings that people attend, and most of the ones I have observed fail to agree / allocate tasks and define responsibilities. They also take too long. Many of these meetings however are routine, they are basically the same meetings week in week out (or day in day out). Taking the time to stop and review the purpose of the meeting can allow you to standardise the meeting, making it more clockwork and functional than it may be currently. The meetings may become 'samey' in structure, but if you can speed them up then they don't become stale. And who knows, you may decide to stop running a few meetings in the process. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

When we start out on our improvement projects, whether we are 'going lean' or for another reason, we sometimes find that our grand plan of how the improvement is going to progress differs from what we actually experience. An approach often referred to as 'winning ugly' (achieving the result, but possibly not in the way you first envisioned, is a nice way of putting it) is a good one to keep in mind when you are faced with projects (and even individual meetings within those projects!) that aren't going to plan. An obvious point that I see on a regular basis is the amount of detail and planning that is put into the improvement project plans because of the fear of having to win ugly. Now, this is not to say that you should skimp on the details and start with a poorly thought out project, but the phrase 'fit for purpose' certainly comes to mind. Unnecessary polishing of project plans delays taking action. Get the plan fit for purpose and then start taking a

Earlier this week I gave a presentation around the subject of improving your process improvement projects. The embedded link below is the annotated version of this presentation. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

As I was finishing the 'go live' of a client's MRPII system, I found myself explaining to their members of staff that trusting the MRP suggestions is a lot like just trusting the Sat Nav you have in your car. I'm sure you've experienced the time when you're Sat Nav has told you to take the next left but you decided to carry on driving straight ahead. When you get to your destination you often have the insight that you're Sat Nav was in fact correct and had provided you with the best route. Your route was sub-optimal in this example. MRPII systems are very similar, we may not understand why they're telling us what to do, but with a bit of digging, and a little bit of understanding we can understand why it is doing what it is doing. Once this comfortable state has been achieved we can then follow the MRPII instructions and use our new found time savings to better effect, such as our continuous improvement projects (rather than running around like headles

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