Getting it Right the First Time

Getting it right the first time can be easier said than done.  It takes a lot of commitment and pre-planning to foresee all the critical pitfalls you may encounter in your pursuit of perfection.  Luckily we all have something to fall back on, continuous improvement.  By the true meaning of the term continuous improvement, it implies that we may not necessarily catch all the possible failure modes but we sure will continue to make things better.  Never the less, systems should be in place to ensure our due diligence in getting it right the first time and handing off a sound resolution or product to our customers.  I have the experience to review your current business practices, policies, and procedures in order to make them better and improve your customer satisfaction rating. Let's have a discussion.  Happy Christmas and New Year!

FOLLOW UP

In the realm of business excellence and in this day of unemployment and dismay I have noticed an escalating trend.  People don't take the time to follow-up.  It's a small courtesy and a simple gesture of respect to show that you're acknowledging a discussion that you had with someone.  Following up is the responsibility of both parties and both should agree on a date and time at which the follow-up discussion will take place.  Get in the habit of following up no matter if you are committing yourself to do something or agreeing with someone else to take some action.  In time you will see that following-up promotes progress and that progress promotes positive thinking - keeping you out of the rut.

The Seven Forms of Waste Series - Transport : part 7 of 7

Well here is the last form of waste - Transport. The effort it takes to transport something from one place to another can have a serious impact on your efficiency. If your in the kitchen and have to run three rooms away for the fire extinguisher then when you get back you may not be able to put out the fire. I can help implement systems where transport is eliminated or minimized for your office, business, or process.
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The Seven Forms of waste: Defects - Part 6 of 7

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", but what if it breaks when you need it most?  Can it be repaired? How long will you have to wait it take to get fixed? Do you have a spare part in inventory? Is this occurrence stopping you from getting something done?  Well my friends all these are things one must consider in the course of ensuring that a process, whatever it is, runs smoothly.  Defects can close your business, tarnish your reputation, and hinder your pursuit of business excellence.  Defects create stress in your life.  Defects create dis-satisfied customers.  There are tools that I can use to minimize risk.  My experience in design and process engineering will help me to help you mitigate risks in your operation.  Defects need to be considered early on in the product development process.  I can help implement monitoring systems such as product trend analysis and statistical process control.  Get your arm around defects and address them before they put a kink in your flow.

The Fourth Form of Waste - Extra Processing

It is time to address the fourth form of waste - Extra processing.  Additional steps to get something right before you present it or get it shipped to your customer eats away at your efficiency.  The culture of getting it right the first time is essential to the success of your business.  Nobody likes recalls and everyone cares if it happens to them.  The severity of a recall increases as we deal with products that affect the critical functions of our lives.  I can help to build a system of processes and procedures that instill the importance of maximum first pass yield.  I can investigate your process and procedures to build up lacking efficiencies.

The Fifth Form of Waste - INVENTORY

Too much inventory wastes your money.  Basically inventory is your money just sitting around doing nothing but collecting dust.  There are many ways to address the minimizing of inventory, however they all come down to a basic premise - understand your market demand and your customer trends.  It is not wise to just wildly product product or order product for the rainy day without some thought behind your reasoning.  This is true also not only in business but in daily life.  Understand your key products to be produced.  What are the key process components that are critical to keep up with market demand.  Keep track of order trends using statistical analysis techniques, some of which are basic and I can implement a system for you to easily implement and understand.  Having just any spare part on hand is not cost effective either.  Understand your downtime trends and critical to quality characteristics and components.  For more helpful advice - give me a call.  Follow my link to my website.

THE THIRD FORM OF WASTE - TRANSPORT

The third form of wast that I'd like to discuss is transport.  The transportation of  goods externally from distribution centers to the consumer or the internal transport of assemblies of product in the manufacturing process.  Wasteful transport can also be inefficient means of transferring information within an office or business facility.  One rule of thumb that I've picked up from my experience in the optical glass industry is that minimizing the occurrences of handling adds value and security that the product will not be damaged.  Reducing or eliminating setup and tear-down times also adds to reducing non-value added activity.  I can baseline your current system through tools such as a spaghetti diagram and standard work combination chart to address the excessive transport in your operation.

OVERPRODUCTION - Part II in the SEVEN FORMS of WASTE Series

It's time now to end the waiting and move on to and discuss the second form of waste, overproduction.  Making too much of something or buying too much of something leads to your hard earned dollars just sitting there on the shop floor, in your closet or in your garage doing nothing.  In the meantime you could redirect those dollars towards something more productive and value added.  Un-necessarily high business costs, including manufacturing labor and overhead costs are incurred when you make too much of something out of pace with the market demand.  I can help.  I can look at your business and baseline your current production plans compared to the market demand trends in your industry and implement more efficient methods in order to free up much needed dollars in these economic times.

THE SEVEN FORMS OF WASTE - PART I (WAITING)

Waiting is a form of waste.  In lean six sigma terms the objective is to eliminate the wasteful activities that do not bring value to your process or operation.  Nobody likes to wait.  Both internal and external customers will be happier with your performance by eliminating or reducing as mush as possible wait times for delivery as well as between process steps.  Methods used to highlight the value and non-value added components of your process include value stream mapping, and standard work combination diagrams.  I can take a look at your process and help seek out alternatives to the waiting in your processes.

A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Implementing lean and six sigma methodology to make your business better will not succeed unless you acknowledge that it is a cultural change.
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PUSH YOUR PLAN

Develop a plan to success.  Determine what you like to do and what you have a passion for and run with it with 110% percent effort.  In this day and age nothing is certain.  Why not control your destiny and push yourself to succeed in one aspect of life.  Often continued success branches off from that one thing that you were able to make relevant to the masses.  Be productive, take time for family, but remember your progress will impact all those around you and that should be the drive that keeps you on track.

TIME TO MARKET

Get products to the customer faster.  Well… the first question you should ask is why do you think your organization is slow?  Ask yourself the following question – Are we slow in getting the products out or is the competition more innovative and in-tune with the marketplace.  Several organizations assume that some segment of their business is to blame.  Internal finger-pointing is pointless and hinders progress.   When your team gets consumed with the internal blame game then that is exactly when the competitors who were once left in the dust are suddenly in the blink of an eye, way ahead of you.   Many organizations succumb to theories such as “this process is too long” or “there are too many quality checks”.  Validating that your product meets the market needs and internal price points is really the bottom line – this is to be balanced with the types of tests used to ensure that a quality product ships out every time.  The failure of companies to avoid past mistakes is sometimes the common mistake.  Many organizations miss the lessons learned  that was inherently provided by experienced employees.  Industry has experienced many downsizing cycles and concurrently lost the inherent and seemingly miraculous knack for not re-inventing the wheel.  

DETERMINING YOUR MARKET WORTH

The unemployment rate continues to climb and although engineering jobs are cropping up here and there, many applicants are applying for one job.  Companies are cost cutting and in most cases trading experience for lower salaries.  It would be realistic to acknowledge that the salary you made previously or currently should be adjusted - the fair market value of your experience should be determined.  Several ways to determine your fair market value include: Networking with peers, Searching out subject matter articles, online income calculators for careers, talking with recruiters.

Marketing Your Operations Excellence Talent

Many company's these days are cutting back on many expenses.  Talented people are out of work and most do not have the means to start venturing down the road of individual consulting.  Others choose not to do it because perhaps they are not good communicators.  I have decided to take a parallel path approach - much like the strategy adopted by many project managers who have an important deadline to meet with an ongoing issue that could spell trouble for the outcome of the project.

How am I marketing myself?  The first step I've taken is to join networking groups and I've put myself in situations where I can start communicating with people.  I've joined a popular fitness club, strike up casual conversation with other parents at my two sons' sports events, and I've purchased a mini laptop so that I can get work on my website done away from home at the local coffee shop.  Internet social networking sites such as facebook, linked-in, and twitter are also great ways to get the word out - every time I update my status I provide a link to my websites.

Currently my new endeavor is to start giving presentations to people at my networking group meetings as often as I can.  The next step after that is to participate in internet advertising for the budding entrepreneur such as Google Adwords and Facebooks Ads component.

Welll that's just a taste of what I'm up to.  I'm off to my son's football game now.

Why are businesses shying away from six sigma?

In today's economy and the desire to turn things around quickly, corporations are cutting staff to make an immediate impact on the bottom line.  The crop of new six sigma projects has become stagnant - perhaps major cost savings have been realized in the manufacturing process.  Applying DFSS to your product development management cycle has stifled the bowl of fresh new "leap frog" type ideas.  Voice of the customer efforts along with QFD (quality function deployment) hav only provided a window to what the customer wants today or what has been desired in the past.  There is no true insight to blue ocean type innovations.  The stagma of six sigma implementation also lingers.  Let's face it - bad news stays in our mind longer than good news.  The negative labels towards six sigma may stem from the following:

• Poor execution
• Too arduous an endeavor
• Boring
• Requires too much data
• Belief that one size does not fit all
• Resistance to a structured methodology
• Too many meetings
• High cost to implement
• So many issues that a starting point is not known

What if we figured out a way to take both a blue ocean approach and a six sigma approach in order to improve our chances of successful implementation and buy-in from the masses?

Implementing Business Excellence and Fair Process

Once you have set out in the direction of a new business, it is important to discuss your idea with the influential people of the company.  Be sure to employ the "fair process" doctrine of including those who will have to live with the change in corporate direction daily.
When people have an emotional attachment to the change, its chances of long term success are increased.  Today, the emphasis is placed on cross-functional teams.  It is important however that the representatives on the cross-functional teams go back to their peers and discuss the change of direction.  It is important that the representative listen to their peers and provide feedback to the cross-functional team.
Frequent business announcements and a means to obtain feedback from employees is also helpful in ensuring that everyone has a sense of contribution and involvement.

Where do we start?

The philosophy of business and operations excellence must start at the top.  Identify the needs of your company with a systematic but open book approach.  By this I mean baseline the position of the company and also the competition.  Outline where and on what level the competition lies.  Outline those factors that are key attributes of your industry and eliminate those that are valued by your intended customer as well as by your non-customers.  I'm in the process of reading a book called BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY and will convey my interpretation in the next few weeks.  The basic premise however is to figure out what differentiates your business from the competition.

Balancing the way we think

As companies move forward in the assessment of their success and failures, many identify a need for better project management.  Typically, structure is desired but not so much structure that the team is caught up in an endless loop chasing perfection.  Occassionally teams should come up for air and take a broad look at what they are doing in order to identify impacts to upstream and downstream processes.  Teams should utilize a mixture of product and process expertise with DMAIC or DMADV tools in a balanced manner.

Innovation and Business Excellence

What is the next big thing?

What are incremental changes?

Industry has in some cases moved away from "out of the box thinking". They fail to take a practical approach to the resolution of challenges.

I sometimes say to myself “I could design anything if you locked me in a room long enough". A broader view of that statement observes that I never mentioned being locked in a room with a set of rules. The main point is that I go in the room and come out with some significant idea! Innovation should be free-minded. We look at the world around us and notice trends of life; newspapers vs. internet, film vs. digital, home vs. cell phone.

Be free to generate ideas and once you have a process framework take steps to validate it to ensure business excellence.

Economics and Business Excellence

In today's economic climate companies should be searching for ways to minimize costs. Unfortunately the quickest method of choice is workforce reduction. I propose methods of taking a practical approach to cost reductions as well as opportunities to increase the "delighter" features of your product and services. No matter how much your workforce is reduced, if what you have to offer is not appealing then your business will continue to struggle. See more information at http://sites.google.com/site/devmontagne/home