A good friend, and colleague, of mine confessed the other week that he had only just started to use ‘to do’ lists. He was almost evangelical about the use of such a tool. I thought that pretty much everyone uses a tool like this. I then thought about this for a bit longer, and I have met lots of different businesses that don’t capture all of the items in their working lives. They may have a main system, such as MRP / ERP , but it’s the little things that trip them up. The promise they made to a customer, a report to print off for a senior manager, specific preparations for a meeting.... or whatever. Being able to capture these items, process and prioritise them, and action them is a skill. I have a feeling that a lot of people see just how much stuff is on their lists if they do compile one that they feel overwhelmed. Is discarding the list the same as ‘burying your head in the sand’? I think so. If you have read my book ‘ Office Productivity ’ then you will know m

Having a written plan can be a very useful tool. Just being able to capture your ideas, put them into a sequence and then work on them can make a huge difference to your ability to implement changes . When I talk to businesses I often find that only their big projects make it into a project plan. What about the smaller items, the mini-projects that only have a few tasks associated? From my experience I see a lot of people in business decide that they can remember the tasks, or that it isn't worth writing the tasks down. I suggest that if this is you that you reconsider. I don't think that every plan should be a bit ornate project plan with a Gantt chart; I think that committing your notes to paper is the point. A sheet of A4 with a heading and a list of tasks is all you need to get started. Our days can be busy and tasks can be forgotten. Even the most informal of project plans will likely give you a benefit in your quest to improve your business . G

A factor that can derail progress on an improvement project is a lack of clarity around who is meant to be doing what. When creating a formal project plan this is usually not an issue. You assign owner's to each element of the plan and it becomes crystal clear who is doing what. The problem, as I see it, is when the project moves out of scope into less formal project areas. You know that something needs to be fixed / improved upon that is related to your project, but no one knows who is responsible for that area. This can obviously lead to confusion and delay if it is not agreed. Having clarity around the business of who owns what process is vital. Communicating this formally is incredibly useful. Most times this kind of ownership is linked back to 'roles and responsibilities' type documents. For many people these are not visible documents and so a way around this is to create a family tree (organogram) to map out people's responsibilities. If there ar

If you have read some of Dr. Deming's ideas about total cost you will be familiar with the idea that the idea of the cheapest supplier often hides other costs (re-work, transport etc...). In a process the same can be said of time. If you want to find the quickest way to complete a process then you need to educate your team to look for the total time. Sometimes the fastest way of completing a specific step can cause problems elsewhere in the process. Likewise a slower looking idea can save a lot of time elsewhere. By reviewing the process from end to end you can find better solutions than when you look at elements in isolation. Next time you are reviewing specific parts of your process try to keep them in the context of your overall process and look to make the biggest overall process improvement . Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business performance.

Making MRP Work: Available on Amazon My latest book ' Making MRP Work ' is currently available for free on Amazon, via the Kindle reading app. I spend a lot of my time helping businesses to improve how their MRP system is set up. The book is aimed at the manager who is tasked with making MRP work, or who is being measured on their on time delivery performance and has a system that is in a mess.  The book starts off looking at how to configure key elements of the system and then focuses on the managerial approach of running a system effectively. The main links to the book are: UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E9SHAN4 US - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9SHAN4 ...or find it directly through the Kindle Store. The book will be free until midnight Sunday (11th August) PST. Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business performance.

We all like smart people, right? The purpose of this article is to share a word of caution when undertaking new continuous improvement projects; sometimes the situation to be improved can be made artificially complex. Many smart people like complicated things. However, complicated problems and complicated solutions can make life unnecessarily difficult. When a situation is difficult to manage and needs to be improved you can often find yourself looking for solutions that will take every last detail into account and provide a robust solution. What if you don’t need to undertake all of these details? What if they are symptoms of something else? If you find yourself in this position then it might be a good time to undertake some root cause analysis, to find out what is real and what is a knock on effect from some other activity. Root cause analysis can be very simple to undertake and one of the most popular options is ‘5 Why’. This approach is widely used to dig past the symp

Day to day working can get in the way of your improvement projects . You start off with good intentions and then find yourself getting caught up with fire fighting and day to day issues that just have to have your attention. Does this sound familiar? When your plans are detailed and rigid in terms of what you have to get done by when you can often find that the smallest bump in the road can derail your plans. I recall reading a book once that talked about the difference between and map and a compass (I think it was one of the Stephen Covey books) and this is the same as top level planning for your improvements. If you segment your year up into sections (quarters for example) and choose a theme for improvement in each segment then you will always have something to refer to when / if you get knocked off track. Using this as your compass can make your focus for improvements easier when you need to get focussed again. It can also help you when you complete one project and need

Is your MRP system helping your business to perform, or is it just creating more work for you? ‘Making MRP work’ is a practical guide aimed at Operations Managers and business directors who need some support with their MRP / ERP system . If you are operating an existing MRP system but feel that it could be doing more for you then this book can help you to identify the changes you need to make. Many businesses find themselves with similar problems. Materials being ordered too late, confusion on the shop floor and spreadsheets are used rather than the system. Does this sound familiar? The sections of this book take you on a journey from the style of approach in using MRP, through the fundamentals and into the effective management of your teams to get the most from your system. Each section concludes with action steps to help you develop your own improvement plan. The final section of the book looks more generally at business improvement projects, with the aim of help

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