One of the questions I get asked is ‘ when is it a good time to improve ?’ This question is usually asked by people who need to make changes to their business but cannot find the time to make changes of any sort. Fire fighting and running around are order of the day and you can see why this question would be asked. I don’t think there is ever a good time to improve, it’s just one of those things we need to embrace and get on with. There are ways to make life easier of course when implementing change. Breaking projects up into tiny steps is a good one and so is sharing the workload. Perhaps, and this is the point of this post, my answer to the question is ‘at the start of the day’. When we perform our small contribution to the improvement project at the start of the day it is given the best chance of success for actually happening. Also, if you subscribe to Parkinson’s Law, then you will catch up with the other tasks of the day and have made some improvement. Could it

Reports, system data, and business information. It’s great stuff, shame so many businesses don’t use it properly. If we used the information to make better decisions wouldn't it be great? What do you do with your business information? Do you apply intelligence to it in order to make your business work more productively? Or does it just pass you by? Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

What have you done today to make you feel proud?  Whether or not you are a fan of Heather Small, these words make you think!  Times are tough at the moment on a lot of levels for a lot of people; the economy is still unreliable, customers are more demanding than ever, utilities and everyday costs continue to rise and Spring is ever elusive! Some of you will be thinking life is difficult enough without taking on any more challenges, but are you forgetting to notice the things that make you feel proud? Alternatives to proud include satisfied, pleased or fulfilled - all key components of contentment and wellbeing.  So feeling proud is essential to how you feel generally, how you perform in your role, and crucially, your levels of resilience.  However, we don't often associate these words with our job or work role. Think for a minute; when was the last time you noticed feeling  satisfied, pleased or fulfilled by something you did at work?  Whatever makes you satisfied

If you've read my book On Time Delivery you will have come across the 'Big Brain' award I gave to one of my team members for his application of continuous improvement. He didn't use fancy techniques or methods he just used some common sense and stopped accepting the way things were. No longer did he tolerate the capacity problems in his departments. No longer did he accept the number of breakdowns that were occurring. No longer did he live with the long tool changeover times. Sometimes it is the smaller things that we can change that can have the greatest impact, and sometimes getting people to get involved is one of the hardest tasks. A really simple way to get people involved, and great if you are starting any kind of lean manufacturing orientated project, is waste walking . Go for a walk through your business and spot the opportunities. Waste walking is something I get emailed about quite often and so our waste walking kit is now availab

Now available at Amazon It seems like books are similar to buses, nothing for a while and then two come together! The bank holiday here in England has been put to good effect and the other book I have been working on for quite some time is now available. Titled ' On Time Delivery ' it is an account of a real lean manufacturing story from a time when I was a Production Manager. It charts some of the highs and lows of trying to sort out the on time delivery problems we were having and my journey to achieve the performance goals I had set for the business. It is available directly from Amazon for the Kindle reading app / device or from most other online e-book retailers (you may have to wait a few weeks from the date of this blog post for iBooks, Kobo, Nook and Sony stores). You can also get the right format via Smashwords . Anyway, if you choose to buy it I hope you enjoy the journey. Learning points are plentiful within the book, so you should be able to f

My new book on a systematic approach to developing future state maps is now available on the Amazon Kindle platform and all other major ebook retailers. The book was written due to several clients having trouble trying to agree on what a good future state map for their business processes would be. This book shares with you a step by step approach to generating and evaluating future state options so that you can build the optimal solution for your business. The book is called 'Optimised Future State' and can be viewed on Amazon.com by clicking on the link below, or on image of the front cover. View Optimised Future State on Amazon . Now available on Kindle and other ebook readers If you are stuck with your future state mapping and want a more rational and systematic approach then check out the book today and put the simple and straightforward method into action. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. If you buy a copy and leave a review

Only a few weeks to go to Thinking Digital 2013 and I can’t wait for my annual fix of new ideas and creativity. If you haven’t heard of Thinking Digital you can find out more at www.thinkingdigital.co.uk I am a big fan and I wanted to share with you, from my perspective as a leadership coach, what Thinking Digital offers ‘non techies’ like me. A Trip into the Future – technology is pretty much central to most of our lives nowadays and Thinking Digital offers an amazing window on the future, a taster of the amazing new stuff that we will all have access to not far into the future. This opportunity to do a bit of time travelling is invaluable for prompting dialogue about the world of unlimited potential we live in – but often don’t notice. It’s also great to spend some time in the company of a bunch of people who live and breathe technology and have embedded it seamlessly into their work and social lives. I’ve learned loads from this and just to share one example – I’ve seen how

One of the common discussions I end up in is around lead time reduction, reducing the total amount of time it takes for an order (or a project, or an enquiry, or a complaint etc...) to move through a business. Obviously a faster and slicker turnaround can be of significant interest to your customers and can help to reduce the costs associated with that process. A simple way of looking at this problem is to think of your business process as being similar to a relay race. Can you remember those from your school days? If you do, you will remember that in order to win you had to avoid dropping the baton, have smooth changeovers and run quickly in-between changeovers. There we go then, a perfect recipe for lead time reduction. In my experience, for businesses with multiple departments, the fastest way to improve overall lead time is to find out where the baton is being dropped. This might take the form of in trays that hide work, unclear specifications in different departments leadin

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There are many ways to approach to the issue of ‘ lead time reduction ’ in a business. We can look at the interfaces between departments, we can look at changeover times, we can look at machine vulnerabilities and we can consider production flows and scheduling. We can also look at how we, as leaders, change our minds and mess up the process with alternating priorities. I realise that priorities will and do change. But sometimes priorities change because we perceive them to be needed to be changed. Could we find a way to hold off changing a priority and waiting until the current project, proposal or production is completed? Being more systematic about our priority changes could make a huge difference to your output and also yield shorter lead times. It has to my clients. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

There are many brilliant business improvement techniques that exist today. Some take little prior knowledge of these ways of working in order to produce excellent effects in your business. Imagine selecting an appropriate handful of these tools, making them accessible to your teams and then watching them yield tangible benefits. Often we get too caught up in trying to do things ‘right’. We don’t have to follow all of the instructions, we don’t have to use every single tool in the tool kit and we don’t have to do things because someone else told us to. We can take what makes sense to us, we can do what we can right now and we can make a system that is ours. Imperfect action can get good results, and once you get some results you can always go back and improve your system until it is perfect (whatever that means!). Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. Business Process Re-Engineering , our guide on Amazon Kindle, can give you a jump start with

To help our prospective clients understand what they want from a performance improvement workshop I have uploaded a two page guide to the main Smartspeed website. To download a copy (no registration required) please use this link . Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. The long version of the link is:  http://www.improvingbusinesses.co.uk/files/1407165/uploaded/Workshop%20Design%20Notes.pdf

Improvement projects don’t always pan out the way you might expect. Improvements often require an iterative approach, we need to try something several times before we realise the benefits of our actions. This article is a reminder of the need to be persistent when undertaking continuous improvement activities. Persistence is vital when we know the direction but we don’t know the specific actions. If we only know the next couple of steps in our improvement journey then all we can do is take the steps. After we have taken those steps we will have new insights and ideas that we can develop into the next steps, but we must be willing to persist in that direction for long enough to achieve our goal. When we undertake improvement projects some things will not go well, we will hit bumps in the road (so to speak). Our ability to move past these and strive towards our objectives is essential. If you upset people because of the way your improvement has manifested itself then say sorry, fix