Standard Operating Procedures , or SOPs, are a staple in the manufacturing world. It’s not just factories either; pretty much everywhere you go there are formal instructions available. SOPs are a way to communicate the best way to perform a task. Having a single optimum instruction can improve the quality of products and services as well as reduce cost and time. You may therefore think that SOPs are embraced by most businesses. From my experience however it appears that they are left to languish. This does not need to be the case, and by using teams of two to write and maintain SOPs you can realise greater benefits from your instructions. Firstly, you need to consider who your team of two will be. Please make it someone who is going to use the instructions. Many businesses use one team to write the instructions and a different team to execute the instructions. In some cases this may because of the technical knowledge required to define the optimum sequence of the steps. Having som

Some businesses that I have worked with have had so many opportunities to improve that they become paralysed. What improvement should we work on first? It's a good question and usually a brief consideration of the benefits and ease of implementation of each improvement will allow you to prioritise the projects. The problem then comes when you know your priorities but you go to work on something else. The item on the top of your list isn't as tempting (or technically satisfying) as one further down the list. Have you experienced this situation? It can be really frustrating can't it? A simple way of making sure you're making progress, along the lines of the 'do less better' time management principle, is to be formal with your priorities. If you chose your top priority on a weekly basis and then committed to not changing for the next week (unless you complete the project) you could find that you get a lot more work completed. Next week you

When developing our improvement plans we are sometimes stuck to work out where we can get to, what our goals can be. We lack vision, or imagination, and feel dried up. We don't know where our business could get to, and obviously what the plan is to get there! If you feel this way then it may be worth looking at the ' proactive sprints ' blog from the other day. The ability to take a couple of steps in the right direction and then see where you are can really help when you don't know where to go to. When you undertake a couple more actions you get feedback. This new view of the world could be the information you need to see further than you do currently. Continuous improvement is about constantly pushing forward. Sometimes it is hard to see where you could take your business' performance to (and  how to do it). Like walking up a hill, when you get the top you can see a whole new vista. Whilst you are walking up the hill you may only be able to see t

I was watching a pre-flight safety demonstration the other week before enjoying a short flight. As I watched I wondered how many times they had performed this routine previously. The information is vital should the worst happen and therefore it gets performed before each flight without fail. They may have performed it thousands of times each. We have similar routines in the business that need to be executed without fail. Many businesses fail, however, to define their routines and get a rhythm going. Unlike the plane, failure in business might mean fire fighting and upset customers... in the short term. Leave this situation for too long and you may have catastrophe, customers leaving and profits sinking. Instead of learning where your nearest exit is, why not find out what are the essential routines for your business? What needs to be completed each day in order to complete a 'perfect' day? Defining and executing effective routines can make a big difference in

Do you have those times in your business when you just don't seem to be making progress with your improvement projects ? I know that I have clients that feel this way from time to time, they just feel a little lost as to what to do next. When I see them in the doldrums I suggest they have a sprint. Pick any tangible piece of improvement work they can see and go for it. Whether this sprint lasts an hour or an afternoon it needs to be an activity that could leave the business in a different place. It doesn't matter how minor the change is either. The sprint could leave you with a new form, a tweak to your scheduling system or an altered meeting agenda. The objective of the sprint is to close out an improvement goal you have set. Small goals work really well for obvious reasons. At the end of the sprint the close out task is to then go back to your improvement plan and revise it. What have your learned from your sprint? How do you see your business now? How do yo

Design For Manufacturing is a well used term in industry, the practice of designing products for ease of manufacturing. This approach uses manufacturing-ability as the focus for improvement of the design. There can however be different perspectives that we could use, and this can be applied to areas other than product design. What if we designed our: customer services for immediate response? order intake for on time delivery? SOPs for simplicity? meetings for decision making? I'm sure that you can think of all kinds of different approaches to different processes. Some processes benefit from having more than one focus to balance out the objectives for that process. Aligning your 'design for....' approach with your business objectives is a good way to direct your continuous improvement activities. Enjoy your re-designing activities! Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business perfor

When a project is being developed there is usually a purpose to it. The purpose can lead you to define an outcome for the project, its objective. What if the objective isn’t a suitable end point for you to reach? For example, and something I was told a long time ago, consider a trapeze artist. If their focus is on the reaching the opposite swing, then they usually fall off. If their focus on the other hand is to successfully travel on the other swing (i.e. they catch it and then use it) then they usually have a far better chance of achieving their objective. In your business improvement projects it can be the same kind of situation. You choose an objective but then realise that this is not the end of the story. You implement the new process, but forget the SOPs, training, auditing etc… You install the new software solution, but forget the housekeeping activities, backups etc… You test a different morning meeting approach, but don’t write down the agenda, share th