Sustainable Improvement Consulting

    REMOVE  Barriers.
             REVEAL  Opportunities.
                        REVIVE  Performance.
                             SUSTAIN  Improvement.

Opportunities to improve performance are ultimately lost in two places – when we fail to recognize them and when they are forfeited due to poor execution and lack of follow-through. Some opportunities that remain hidden or just out of reach are worth millions of dollars. Our goal is to partner with you to identify, value, capture and sustain these improvements to maximize operational, financial and organizational performance BEFORE investing in expansion capital.

It is possible to focus your entire improvement process on lost opportunity. This includes key measures, trend charts, process controls, flowcharts, working relationships between departments, communications and reports. Linking opportunity learnings to the management system (i.e., budget and capital approval decision criteria, incentive plans and employee orientation programs) removes barriers to improvement and facilitates sustainable change. “Opportunity Boot Camp” TM, an On-Site Workshop, helps redefine lost opportunity, emphasizes the value of missed opportunities, and  provides a vision of how things will be different in an opportunity-based culture.

We help our clients:

• Identify, Capture and Sustain Improvement by working with them to develop and implement opportunity-based processes that create an opportunity-based culture and remove the barriers that interfere with success. Improvement initiatives that fail to deliver or sustain expected benefits are missing these components.

• Focus on three areas for improvement (see below for more detail).
  • Lost Production - Produce More with Existing Equipment.
  • Excess Cost - Reduce Costs Using a Surgical Approach.
  • Organizational Effectiveness - Remove Barriers that Hinder Improvement and Prevent Sustainable Change.

• Change what they Fix, Measure and Talk About.
  • Expand their Definition of Opportunity.
  • Tackle the Recurring Problems that are "eating their lunch"
  • Select and manage with measures linked to opportunity.
  • Focus on processes, not people.
  • Prioritize projects by their economic impact.
  • Hone their execution skills to capture and sustain project benefits.
  • Link the management decision criteria to improvement potential.
  • Develop a proactive culture and experience real culture change.

• Define a scope of work that fits their needs:
  • Customized Improvement Systems
  • Improving the Effectiveness of Existing Programs
  • Help with Specific Tools/Methods (key measures, flowcharts, process control, etc.)
  • Management System Processes / Execution
  • Management Team Coaching
  • Process Improvement Team Facilitation / Action Plan Execution
  • Creating New Processes (especially those that involve multiple departments)
  • Removing Organizational Barriers

We help all departments and organizational levels change the way they work...forever:

• See opportunity in every problem. Problems feel different when this paradigm shift occurs.
• Prioritize problems and resources based on the bottom line impact.
• Identify and chart key measures and interpret learnings from the trends.
• Set process optimums to reveal opportunities and maximize value creation with the current equipment set.
• Develop control and response plans to connect operators to process control, minimize out-of-control events and support ISO certification requirements.
• Recognize and remove barriers that prevent people from being honest about what needs to be fixed.
• Capture and communicate process knowledge and customer requirements across departments or divisions.
• Create and implement new work processes, especially processes that involve multiple departments.

LOST PRODUCTION - Produce More with the Equipment You Already Have

• Availability and utilization ratios hide opportunities to produce more with your existing assets. We show you how to find and capture hidden equipment capacity (availability and utilization) without postponing planned maintenance activities.
• Every year millions of dollars are spent on expansion capital that was not really needed. We show you how to analyze your entire value stream for excess capacity, avoid budget targets that exceed its capacity, and postpone expansion capital until hidden capacity has been tapped.
• Reporting systems reflect data about what happened – product produced, dollars spent, and revenue collected. Lost production is often not measured or focused on because it relates to “what did not happen”. We teach you how to calculate and value lost production and how to communicate losses strategically to increase urgency and change what people fix, measure and talk about. Real and lasting culture change is a deliverable of this improvement approach.

EXCESS COSTS - Reduce Costs Using a Surgical Approach

• Managers are constantly challenged to reduce costs. Because excess costs are often buried in total costs, reducing costs without affecting value-added activities can be difficult. We show you how to find the excess costs and surgically remove them by eliminating the problems that are driving them.
• People control excess costs or waste in their personal lives by preventing problems from occurring. We lock the door to prevent a break-in, change oil to prevent an engine failure,  add air to tires to prevent a blow-out or flat, etc. We teach managers and employees the same common-sense prevention approach for the workplace to avoid wasteful spending and raise awareness about the value of prevention.

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS - Remove Barriers that Hinder Improvement and Prevent Sustainable Change

• Barrier Removal - Millions of dollars are spent on improvement initiatives each year with disappointing results. We believe the main reason that companies continually search for better programs is that improvement tools and methods are designed to improve processes, not to remove organizational barriers.  Organizational barriers unrelated to process performance cannot be removed by tools designed to improve process performance.  We help you address and solve the often uncomfortable overarching cultural and behavioral issues that prevent change and improvement.  Examples include:
  • Fear of talking about what really needs to be fixed
  • Acceptance of recurring problems as part of the process
  • Mixed messages and sacred cows
  • Disconnects between management system processes and improvement initiatives
  • Organizational silos
  • Deficient customer/supplier relationships
  • Poor execution of management system processes

These barriers subtly form corporate culture, but usually are not addressed within the scope of improvement initiatives. Our process for “the people side of improvement”  provides a comfort zone to address the politically incorrect issues that "eat your lunch" but are only discussed behind closed doors.

• Management Team Coaching - Managers are often relegated to spectator roles in the improvement process (see Improvement Leadership 101 workshop for details). We help them:
  • Manage improvement like they manage operations.
  • Become “players” in improvement and be great improvement leaders.
  • Remove barriers between departments (they are the only people that can do this).
  • Evaluate budget goals and expansion capital requests based on process potential ("Can we do it?" and "Is it really needed?").
  • Convert staff meetings from information sessions where attendees listen and the go back to work to work sessions where performance trends and improvement projects are reviewed, action plans are assigned and concerns about executing action plans are addressed. Honest and open communication becomes part of the process.    

• Process Improvement Team Facilitation/Training – Teams play an important role in defining projects, developing action plans and sustaining improvement. We train teams on the basics of the improvement process and facilitate team meetings so that team members can focus on productive work while they are together.