Continuously focusing on simplicity, quality and speed

Business is more and more competitive with pricing pressures, cost pressures and time to market pressures. A company must be organized to pursue continuous improvement with a focus on delivering both internal and external customer needs. This is no easy task.

Symptoms which may reflect a need for process improvement often include:

- Recurring business and supply chain problems and issues that simply do not go away...

- Not enough human or financial resources to accomplish existing and/or future business objectives...

- Customer complaints and/or defections...

- High operational costs and out of control overheads...

- A lack of independent, reliable, factual management information from which you can draw conclusions and make decisions...

A strong and successful business must continually question established business assumptions, identify non-value added activities (waste) and create streamlined, customer-focused processes.

Sample Questions

• How do I get started? MFM says . . .
  

It is absolutely critical to clearly identify the problems that are trying to be solved. Sometimes a company may focus on the symptoms, but not the original problem. Stepping away from the business, even going to the beach to think about the issues, may be helpful. It may take an outside eye to see the broader picture.

• We know the problems, but can’t seem to move to the next step. MFM says . . .
  

Once you have identified your hypothesis and a plan of implementation, creating the necessary changes and sustaining them can be the single most difficult task in this process. Getting the right people to do the right things in the right way is your challenge. Constant communication with everyone that is involved is critical to the success of this process.