| Greetings!
We hope you enjoy this month's edition of our operational excellence newsletter. Please take a few minutes to read the introductory piece about Doing the Right Things. This should be your challenge when implementing any process improvement initiative. Happy reading.
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Quantum Associates, Inc
Operational Excellence Newsletter
Delivering Swift and Significant Results
"Our groove is to help you improve."
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September 2016
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Recently I met with a client, whose company was making their third attempt to move the needle on their Lean journey. Despite all the previous attempts I was happy to see that the client was not dissuaded in implementing Lean process improvement. As we continued our conversation I asked the client, "what are you going to do different this time?" He talked about improving capacity, reducing lead time and improving on-time delivery.
"Those are all noble and worthwhile goals, I said, but is everyone in the organization aware of the golas and how to deploy them throughout the organization?" He said, "I have had some meetings with the management team and mentioned to them our strategy going forward." How do you know and for that matter they know they are doing the right things?" I asked. "Well they are all aware of the objectives", he said.
I find this to be a common problem in most companies, the person at the top establishes the improvement strategy but fails to deploy it throughout the organization. Take the goal of improving on-time delivery. What's the objective? 90%, 95%, or 100%. Many times I've seen the goal established with no objective in mind. If we want our people doing the right things we need to provide goals to guide them. Once we provide the goals then we need to make sure everyone in the organization owns a piece of the goal. I am always reminded of this example from my own experience as a Plant Manager. I was given the objective of achieving 99% on-time delivery. I called my staff together and reviewed the objective with them asking each of them to come back with departmental objectives to help achieve 99% on-time-delivery (OTD). The maintenance supervisor expressed how he was going to help achieve the OTD objective by increasing the uptime on my equipment from 95% to 99%. This made perfect sense because the less downtime I have the better the probability of shipping on time. The maintenance supervisor was "doing the right thing."
Doing the right thing requires more than mentioning the objectives and goals it requires ownership by the management team. Once we establish ownership the next step is deployment. Goal deployment is especially important for any organization wishing to implement lean process improvement because it ensures that Lean is aimed at the heart of the company. If lean process improvement serves the core needs of the customer-quality, delivery and cost, and is introduced at the highest levels of the organization it will last forever. By contrast, as my client should have figured out by now, if lean process improvement is peripheral or introduced at the middle management /staff level it will have a limited half-life, i.e. three attempts at implementation.
Are you doing the right things to ensure your process improvement initiative is successful?
Willie
Willie L. Carter is the president Quantum Associates, Inc., Highland Park, Illinois. Along with his nearly 40 years experience in operations, quality and consulting in various industries, Willie is a Certified Lean Sensei, Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence, and a Certified ISO 9000 Lead Assessor. He can be reached at wcarter@quantumassocinc.com
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Process Improvement and Innovation
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Contributors: Alan Hohn
Process improvement is about reducing the waste. Innovation is a whole new magic...(Read More)
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Baby Steps: How Steady Improvements Drive Exceptional Results
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Successful organizations are not much different from successful people. Both must continue to try things, learn from failures, and adapt and change as needs or markets change...(Read More)
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Sulzer: Lean Management Reduces Repair Times for Oil & Gas Industry
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Sulzer's Lean Principles are at the very core of the company's philosophy and with the application of these principles it has reinvented the way service work is performed...(Read More)
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Iowa Manufacturers in Danger of Being Left Behind
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Contributor: Kevin Hardy
About a quarter of Iowa's manufacturers are thriving, highly profitable ... Lean manufacturing has been a focus in Iowa for at least a decade, CIRAS ...(Read More)
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Our Reason for Being
Quantum Associates was founded on the premise of bringing together like-minded associates with multiple years of industry experience reducing waste and improving processes in organizations. Our goal is to leverage the knowledge and experience of our seasoned associates to assist both service and manufacturing organizations train their employees to untangle intermingled processes in order to clearly see the specific process they manage or touch as it flows from start to finish and to improve the performance of those processes so that every stakeholder (customer, employee, supplier, investor) is better off. We serve as the nucleus for delighting your customers by preparing your people to improve their processes.
What We Look For in a Client
We look for companies/organizations who want to untangle their processes in order to clearly see how to improve the performance (efficiency, productivity, customer experience) of those processes so that every stakeholder (customer, employee, supplier, and investor) is better off.
We guarantee 100% customer satisfaction absolutely.
"Our groove is to help you improve."
Enjoy the Newsletter,
Willie L. Carter
President
"All improvement happens project by project and in no other way." ~ Joseph Juran
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