Which direction do your projects point to? Our continuous improvement projects will take us in a direction. Is the direction away from our problems, or is it toward our vision for a business that works simply, delivers its results and does so in a way that astonishes the customer? Most improvement projects move us away from disaster. Away from the complaining customer. Away from the legal issues. Away from the defects. We could move toward our vision. Toward lower unit costs. Toward lightening fast lead times. Toward guaranteed on time delivery. Toward new products that wow. Toward customer partnerships. If only we took the time out from our daily busy workloads to decide where we should go to, and not leave it to chance. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

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

Many years ago when I was on a summer placement from university I was fortunate enough to gain experience in a prestigious manufacturing business. The most interesting part of that experience was that I spent over seventy percent of my time working on the ‘wrong’ project. This article is going to re-live part of that placement and share with you my thoughts on how to make sure that your improvement project has the best chance of generating the results you are looking to achieve. When I started the project it was not something new that I was dealing with. According to the engineers on the team the problem had existed in some shape or form for the past fifteen years. This time period had allowed for a number of theories to become agreed within the team as to why the problem was occurring, but still the elusive goal had not been attained. The downside for me, upon reflection, was that a distinct direction had been set and I was about to follow it. I used a range of approaches to try

Sometimes a business improvement project gives a business a direct benefit, one that is obvious and immediate. This is especially true when considering complaints from customers about delivery performance. It is also the case that sometimes the improvement is, or should be, a means to an end. For example, if your business is running excessive overtime then saving that overtime expense would be a direct benefit. The l ead time reduction project , or whatever you did to save the need for overtime, is the intermediary. It enabled you to make the real saving. Another example would be a project that saves the senior managers of a business time, this would only be really useful if the time could then be invested to grow the business or do something similar that would provide a tangible benefit to the business. The idea of the tangible benefit is therefore the point I am getting to. When we are planning our improvements out we need to be conscious of our ability to ‘cash in’ on the

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

When we are generating ideas for improving our businesses one of the traps we need to avoid is getting caught up with the chasing of ideas at the expense of implementation. Are you one of those businesses who are great at identifying improvement opportunities but not so great at closing down an improvement and making part of your normal business life? If so, the rest of this article will hopefully give you some ideas on how to change this situation around. Firstly, well done for generating so many ideas for your business! Many businesses find themselves in a position where they can see the immediate problems that their business is facing, but lack the vision on where their business could go to. What I am getting to here is that going from bad to OK is a different premise from going to OK to amazing (or excellent, or any other word you choose to use). Generating ideas is vital to business improvement , but so is implementation. One of the simplest ways I have found to make gett

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