If you are looking for some ideas on how to improve the profit and control of your factory based business then download our free report now . This is a direct link, so there is no need to enter your email address / sign up to our newsletter. To access your copy, please click on this link:  Free Business Improvement Report I hope you enjoy the ideas. Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business performance.

Improvement projects rarely run according to plan. You make a change to your business processes and then find out that your initial assumptions were wrong. You gain new insights and these can be re-invested into your revised attempt. The key is to know when to change tack and when to hold. When the results just aren’t appearing you need to ask yourself if the people who are involved with the change really understand what is happening. This is not a condescending point, this is reality. Communication within a change project often leaves people wanting. The instructions that get handed down are usually lacking and this can lead to a less than satisfactory attempt. The method that is being used may not be as efficient, or effective, as you may have hoped. If the initial expectation is that there is a lot of work to be undertaken then try stopping the work after a few hours have passed. Can it be done differently? Can a different approach yield results much faster? A little bit of

After receiving a number of enquiries about the availability of my e-books in PDF format I have now uploaded them to the improvingbusinesses.com website. This site launched last week and also hosts the improvement kits that you may have already seen elsewhere on this blog. To visit the site, click here , or on the screen shot below.   Giles Johnston Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business performance.

Available for immediate download A common theme I hear from my clients is ' when will I have the time to implement the changes that I want to make? ' It's a fair question, I think most of us feel pushed at the best of times to get everything into our working weeks (however long those may be). To answer my clients comments I ended up creating them simple to use spreadsheets to help them see their weeks and their obligations differently. For most of them they hadn't realised how much time they lost every week. They also tried to do too much at once; an unrealistic plan that ended up with them going nowhere. I was relating this story to some small business owners the other week and their response was 'can you send me a copy?' I've gone one step better than that and the spreadsheet I use with my clients, and a set of instructions, is now available on our sister site ( www.improvingbusinesses.com ). The instructions take you step by ste

Standard Operating Procedures (commonly known as SOPs) are an extremely useful tool for most businesses. SOPs are also one of the most underrated tools I see on my travels. This simple instructional approach is underutilised in many businesses as once they are written they never see the light of day (until something goes wrong!). In my book, ‘ Visual SOPs ’, I discuss using what I call a ‘SOP Map’ to help get better use out of your SOPs. The idea is simple – you attach your SOP references to a business process map that you have for your business. The visual reference I make in the book is about keeping our SOPs visible within the business. If your business process maps are a visible item then this is a great way to help incorporate SOPs into your day to day working. One of the greatest reasons for having SOPs is to speed up training of new team members. Once you have defined the one best way to complete a task in your business you need to make sure that new people adhere to t

Interesting isn't it the differing perspectives on the current Miliband furore? There seems to be a general concern Ralph Miliband's view will have influenced his son's perspective on the world. Rather than "did he, didn't he?" I would say it's almost certainly the case - how could he not! How can we not influence those around us?  How have you influenced people already today? Not just those who you care for or work closely with but those you pass in the street, the person you have just phoned to sort out something with your bank or latest IT purchase, or the shop you just bought your coffee or lunch in. Do you know?  Who has influenced you? Who and what sparked that thought, question, consideration, insight, happiness, sadness, uncertainty, admiration, doubt? Some big thing and intense conversation, maybe, or just maybe the tone of voice the person used, how they looked you in the eye when they spoke to you, the way they shared their feelings abo

Once improvements have been identified you need to manage the activities required in order to realise the benefits, otherwise the project will have been in vain. I see many businesses that talk a good talk, but don’t deliver what they could. True, the day to day busyness of work can get in the way, but that’s not a great reason is it? Managing change is just the same as managing any other project with two subtle differences. The first is that you need to help your team overcome their fear of failure. The second is to help them get started with taking action. Overcoming the fear of failure can be facilitated by being interested in finding out what the results are from their ‘experiments’. The results they achieve are just that – results. They are indicators and are only outcomes if you decide that they are. Improvements rarely go right, that’s why PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) is at the heart of Continuous Improvement . Getting started with action goes back to the previous secti

Continuous Improvement , or CI, is a very common term used in manufacturing (and pretty much every other sector). The word continuous implies that it doesn’t stop, but that is what I see time and time again. Most businesses that employ a CI approach do so because they have problems. This is natural and I applaud this approach. However, a business moving from bad to OK is different to a business moving from OK to excellent. When you have problems they are visible. When your business is doing OK there are fewer visible problems. This is when a lot of CI activity grinds to a halt. I have three suggestions that might make your life easier should you wish to continuously improve how your business operates. Choose a narrow focus, make it routine and use tiny steps. You may have seen a trend in this short report about routines. Routines can make a massive difference and including proactive idea generation and improvement activity is no different. Whatever method works for you to gene

MRP systems are an integral part of many manufacturing businesses. Whether you are running MRP, MRP II or ERP there are some common issues that I see on a regular basis. I see three main points when it comes to using MRP systems: 1. Decide how you want to use your MRP system. 2. Configure the various modules correctly. 3. Manage the MRP process as you would with other processes. For point 1, is your business a ‘Make to Stock’, ‘Make to Order’ or an ‘Engineer to Order’ type of business. Being clear about this can make configuring your system more straightforward. Configuring the modules, point 2 above, means inputting your rules of working into the system. Many businesses either lack the knowledge of how to configure the system or they fail to complete the task. Either way they end up fighting the system’s suggestions every day, often creating workarounds and poor working habits. Finally, there are routines associated with MRP systems. Identify them and build

Many businesses use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help them judge and monitor the performance of the business. They often use what I would call ‘output metrics’. These metrics tell the story of what happened, which is useful to know. They need to be included in a suite of measures, to give you the proper context, but don’t allow you to change the outcome. Process KPIs are therefore metrics that tell you how key elements of your business processes are working. By understanding the performance in these areas you can adjust what you are doing today, with the idea of impacting tomorrow’s outcome. Managing the process helps you to define what the output metrics will be. If you review your process map, and the questions you have designed for your sunrise meeting, you will probably start to see the type of process KPIs you have. Whilst many KPIs are numerical in nature, usually expressed as a percentage, they can be used digitally. The ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions of the sunrise

By defining a handful of essential routines for your business you have taken a step forward. The real challenge is in executing these routines day in and day out. A great way to keep an eye on things and get your team involved with developing these new habits is a ‘sunrise meeting’. Simply, a sunrise meeting is a start of the working day meeting where the key elements of your routine are reviewed. Ideally the routines can be boiled down to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to prevent people from dodging the question. For example, if your team were responsible for the shop floor information packs (drawings, works orders etc…) then an effective question could be ’did all of the packs get issued yesterday?’ Sunrise meetings should be short and punchy. If they start to break down into discussions about specific issues in the factory then the focus is lost. The idea is that your team are keeping an eye on the overall process happening day in and day out. Specific issues could point to a part

Businesses need to create and use effective routines . When you boil down your factories’ activities you can find a simple series of activities that need to be completed on a daily, or weekly, basis. Businesses that are out of control find themselves not doing the things that they know they should be doing. The first day is OK as nothing bad has happened. Extend this forward a week or two and the lack of proper activity starts to have a knock on effect. The key is to make the right activities part of the normal course of action. One factory that I worked with had a purchasing team that didn't execute their daily activities each day. Problems would ‘come out of the blue’ every few weeks. Suppliers had to be chased to prevent line stoppages and a frenzy of activity would be seen by all. Their problem was that they hadn't decided how to handle their key activities each and every day, so they didn't. Rather than correct this situation they worked ineffectively for a week o

Many of my clients are engaged in contract manufacturing and have lots of different products moving through their factory. The combination of having many customers, products and batch sizes can create a complex environment. When a business like this is struggling to manage their schedules they can slip into a fire fighting situation. Have you seen different schedules being written down on pieces of paper and handed to your Team Leaders every few hours? The new note is different to the one they received earlier that day and can leave production teams confused. Late orders are chased rather than managed. I realise that demands do change in a business, but not tackling this issue can really diminish productivity. I am a big fan of having formality in the right places of a business. The right kind of discipline and considered action can have a big impact when used correctly. The kinds of problems I have mentioned above often stem back to one problem. Businesses that don’t consistently