What a great day! I started out with a meeting and then carried out a Business Diagnostics. What's that you say? Well its where we carry out a site visit - without creating any invasive interviewing or getting in the way of operations and look to see what measures are in place.
Measuring...
So unlike the days of old where a chap walked around with stop watch and measured everyone running around like headless chickens I tend to look to support people, business and processes. After all, its not people that create the processes, they tend to work from processes set. So most of the time it can be the process that doesn't make profit for a business not people.
What do I measure?
I look at the Business Measures in place and they maybe working well as they are and I will adapt the assessment considering these. There's also some agreed assumptions at times where I will be honest about what I find - because not all things are as they seem. Where there's nothing in place I will use following measurements; NRFT, DSA, FSU, PP, ST, VAPP and OEE as standard. These measure business to see how for one area: ST (or Stock Turns) are going. I will look to measure how much stock is being replaced in the warehouse and how often. If there's a long delay in turning stock around then there's going to be an issue with cash-flow as cash is being tied up in stock! These are great measures and give a holistic overview of the business. We often talk about QCD and Quality, Cost and Delivery gives a balanced overview of business. At the end of collecting information and data where possible I will number crunch it all to find out whats really going on. My remit is to find the 'truth'.
Data...
Data is critical, since unless its accurate or current or relevant then it wont tell us the truth. In the case where it cant be produced or relied upon I tend to create data capture sheets so as to catch the data and then pop back after a month or so to get a snap shot of where we are really.
I love this work and really like to provide a company with real and accurate data reports so they can see where they are and what short, medium or long term measures are needed to keep being successful. I also provide process solutions and I can even do all this work on a share gain basis or day rate. Where businesses want to imbed Process Improvements I deliver training in the following areas; Problem Solving, Work Place Organisation, Root Cause Analysis, Data Measurement, Effective Team Working, Visual Management and include such things as Poka Yoke and Ishikawa Techniques - Yes that's right, you'll learn some Japanese in the process too! Best of all you wont be saying it's all Dutch to me afterwards!
I have been training and delivering Lean Process Improvements for over 10 years now in a lot of varying industries and business settings. I have gained a great deal of experience and currently work to deliver within the Rolls Royce Supply Chain on behalf of the Motor Industries Trade Association, SMMT Industry Forum. Collectively we are known to deliver the Rolls Royce of training programs and its great to be one company out of severn selected and chosen to deliver in the UK Aerospace, Rail, Nuclear and Manufacturing Sectors. We have plenty of stories and fun moments to share.
1-1=3 This means the output of two people working together can achieve more than a person working alone. I believe that us humans can and do achieve so much together when we work together. Positivity is a big part of my life in general and I hope it rubs off where ever I go.