What's In a Name?
If we can learn from history, it would tell us that giving a common name to a strategy not only trivializes it, but it also puts it in the category of what others are doing. Our experience is that every organization is different and what worked for Motorola or GE may or may not work for your organization. There are differences in needs, culture, and market dynamics. However, one thing is certain, standing still is not an option.
Our belief is that tools are only a means to an end, not the end itself. Therefore, we focus upon what an organization is trying to accomplish and then implement the simplest approach possible to get there. As a result of this thinking, we have developed a unique way to implement a strategy of process improvement. We help define the difference between process management and task management and then we help implement the skills, attitudes, and knowledge necessary to allow it to happen. This ideal is begun at the senior management level and then cascaded into the entire organization thus creating a culture to accept the changes. Our success creates an integrated systems approach rather than simply working with a tool kit.
Which Tool Kit To Use:
Improving business processes can take one of two tracks, Root Cause Analysis to eliminate variation, or Cycle Time Reduction to eliminate non-value added steps. The problems are different therefore the tools and approach need to be different. Common to both approaches is that the people working in the process are trained, using the appropriate tools in order to improve it. This brings learning into the organization which establish strong buy-in that makes the gains sustainable. Under our approach, people skills and understanding team dynamics are crucial to long-term success. This unique approach accounts for the high success rate of this integrated systems approach.
Results.
By reducing variations in a process, an organization is able to prevent problems from happening by building quality in rather than inspecting our defects. The level of improvement can be measured by "sigma" (defects per million), by time, by cost, by ROI, by customer satisfaction, or other measurements that may be specific to your market or industry. However, one thing is certain, both literature and our experience indicates that when properly implemented and for the right reasons, there is no down side. In fact, process management becomes an investment rather than an expense.
