Project: Administration Time Reduction
Background
The Northumberland Cheese Company Ltd (NCC) based in South Northumberland, produce cheeses for local markets as well as big name supermarket chains.
It was felt by NCC that too much time was spent on the administration of the business and they turned to Smartspeed Consulting to work with their staff to develop solutions to this problem.
What I did
- Identified areas of repetition in the day-to-day administrative operations at NCC.
- Streamlined the methods used to carry out stock taking.
- Created rotas to ensure that all tasks are completed.
- Development of a forecasting tool.
- Reduced the time spent handling telephone calls.
- Implementation of a standard production schedule.
Results
From altering the way work was organised a 20% reduction in time spent on administrative activity was achieved.
To ensure that this result was maintained strategically important tasks were brought in to make sure that old habits didn’t return (there is no time for the old habits now!).
From this change new, more meaningful, work is now being carried out in the same time as before.
“You worked with the team and made sure that all parts of the business linked together. Admin shouldn’t be a ‘black hole’; you encouraged the people to use the tools available and helped them gain confidence in doing so. Your skills in time management, systems and finding waste helped you to get straight into this project without causing disruption to my staff.”
Mark Robertson, Owner, The Northumberland Cheese Company