If you've been following my monthly email updates you'll know that my latest kit is the ' Improvement Accelerator Framework '.

Many businesses focus heavily on the world around them, rather than the world inside the business when looking to manage supply chains. Getting the balance right between flexible and formal is a challenge that we all face, and getting it right can make a big difference to how consistent and how easy it is to deliver on time. For ideas on this please read my article ' Take Control of Your Internal Supply Chain to Improve On Time Delivery ' which you can read here - http://www.systemsandprocesses.co.uk/?p=1936 About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the ' Making It Happen ' continuous improvement toolkit.

My popular Kindle / iTunes book ' Business Process Re-engineering ' is now available as a paperback. To get hold of your copy please visit your local Amazon site and search for the title of the book. Or, if you are in: the UK -  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1520300115 the US -  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520300115 Enjoy the ideas, Giles About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the ' Making It Happen ' continuous improvement toolkit.

It's a good question, one that we sometimes forget to ask. If you want your processes to deliver on time , then starting on time is one of the best (and simplest) strategies that you can deploy. But, let me twist this question around slightly...

I often get asked what is the best way to improve a business' on time delivery performance. My answer is 'get really good at the basics'.

Do you have a long list of improvement opportunities that never seems to change? Do you feel that the whole list is stuck and not delivering the benefits that are possible? …if you feel the same then you are not alone!

Meetings can be pressurised. Deadlines can do funny things to people’s thinking. The demands of a business can trim away the perceived fat of being able to stop, mull things over and come up with new ideas. Is this the same for your business?

One strategy that is worth considering, if your improvement projects aren’t going as well as you would hope, is to go visible. ‘Going visible’ is slightly different to ‘going public’ for one simple reason.

When you are getting stuck trying to generate alternative options to solve your business improvement challenges don’t forget to ask for help. A simple ‘could you give me your thoughts on X?’ can generate a whole raft of alternative improvement ideas (where X is your issue to be resolved, of course!).

Do you feel that your continuous improvement plans are going off course? Do you sometimes wonder if you are on the right track when it comes to making change? If you feel that your improvement plans are going off course then don’t worry, join the rest of us who have to embrace this on a regular basis!

Have you ever found yourself scratching your head trying to come up with ideas to improve how different parts of your business could work? If you do find yourself in this position you could do what one of my clients did the other week. We created a cause and effect diagram (aka fishbone diagram) for the opposite of what they wanted. In this case it was how not to deliver on time. A version of this diagram is shown below: They created a diagram that gave them the keys to poor performance, so we simply flipped it round to give them a road map to achieve what they did want to achieve. e.g. Meaningless KPIs became meaningful KPIs. Each new factor was then rated out of ten to give them a score and then this next question was asked: What do you have to do to achieve a ten for each factor? Et voila! An action plan was born. It is sometimes easier to declare what bad looks like rather than struggling to think about what 'good' looks like. Could you use this simple

Most people I speak to would say “no”. Another question for you - have you mapped your processes recently? I’m not talking about do you have mapped processes for your ISO 9001 Quality Management System from five years ago, I’m talking about a process being mapped in the last six months.

This post is simply a question for you to ponder: "Do you prepare thoroughly before you start work?" By work I am including projects that you might be working on, your day to day normal work tasks or anything else you do during your working day.