Productivity Boost – Jump Start Lessons
A collection of practical improvement methods to get you ready for driving up the performance of your business, available from day one.
PB1 – The End of a Process
A quick review of your main business processes’ effectiveness by focusing on the last step in the process.
PB2 – Personal Losses
If you don’t know where your time gets sucked away to you will be less effective in making change happen.
PB3 – Hour of Pain
An effective strategy to buy some time to help you with your improvements.
PB4 – Measuring Your Productivity
If you don’t know where you are now, how will you know when your projects have made a proper contribution to your business?
PB5 – Process Driven Meetings
Change your focus on your business meetings and improve the results that they produce.
PB6 – The Project ‘Cupboard’ Method
A powerful strategy to get your projects off the ground and delivering results.
PB7 – Rolling Planning Horizons
Add some structure and schedule to when you will deliver your projects and phase the activity correctly.
PB8 – Tying Up Loose Ends
Spring clean your business life and create some head-space to tackle your improvement challenges.
Making It Happen – The Main Course
This is the core of the programme, a sequence of 30 lessons and 4 sprint projects to help you deliver change for both you and your business.
1. The CARL Tool
A simple method to give you an instant boost in your own effectiveness at making change happen.
2. Using CCC to increase engagement
A quick tool to help you get your team on board with the improvement process.
3. Creating effective action plans
A step-by-step method to help you create effective improvement action plans, every time.
4. Prioritising improvement opportunities
A robust approach to help you select the optimum sequence of improvement activities for your business.
5. Making PDCA work for your business
Using the fabled PDCA framework to greater effect.
6. Using Kaizen to get improvements moving
A variation on the normal use of Kaizen to help you get your projects moving towards the finish line if they have stalled.
7. Inoculation – protecting yourself from the naysayers
This planning approach can smooth the path for your improvement projects.
8. Standardised meetings
Ideas on how you can maximise the impact of your regular business meetings.
9. Practical KPIs
This lesson includes a simple process to help you determine the most useful Key Performance Indicators for your business.
10. Aligning job roles
Boiling jobs back to their essence, and then using this realisation to help you plan time effectively.
11. Fishbones for idea generation
Reversing the usual fishbone approach to help you generate improvement opportunities.
12. Takt time
Putting this simple demand calculation to good use, so that you can get through your improvement activities at the right pace.
13. Project Charters
Take advantage of my simple project charter format to help your project start and finish without disappointment.
14. To do lists – that work!
My views on what makes a to do list a great business improvement tool.
15. Standard Operating Procedures
Ideas and thoughts on how to make your business’ instructions even more effective.
16. Using skills matrices effectively
Taking this time tested business tool to a new level in terms of business improvement.
17. Intelligent Pareto
Applying this brilliant insight to the world of continuous improvement idea generation.
18. 5S that works!
Practical advice on how to fix a 5S implementation if yours has gone awry.
19. Keeping track of the improvements
Improving the visibility of change projects within your business.
20. Eliminating waste
A slightly different view on waste walking that you can use within your business.
21. The monument of change
Ensuring that you have a point of reference to keep change going in your business.
22. Practical process mapping
Dos and don’ts for capturing your process maps effectively.
23. Moving from a project to a process
How to make sure that your change projects become sustainable and avoid ‘falling over’ down the line.
24. Root Cause Problem Solving
Tips and advice on using the ever effective 5 Why ‘root cause problem solving’ approach, and what to do when you can’t agree where to start!
25. Codifying data
A whistle stop tour through using data held in spreadsheets to help drive process improvement activity.
26. The loss tracker
A staple tool from the Production Engineer’s toolbox, revamped for wider use!
27. Avoiding the unwanted future
Looking at an improvement from different angles can help you to take the fear out of the process of change.
28. Setting up to win
How do you make sure that you give your teams (and yourself) the best chance to succeed at making change a reality? This is the focus of lesson 28.
29. Lead by example
Leadership can make a big difference to how changes take effect within a business. This lesson looks at some powerful factors that can significantly change the outcomes for your change projects.
30. Focus on principles
There are so many improvement methodologies, which one do you choose? This final lesson shares with you my thoughts on how you can boil the improvement approaches down to their guiding principles, so that you can apply them effectively.
Sprint #1
Developing a workload management tool.
Sprint #2
Lead time reduction.
Sprint #3
Easier on time delivery performance.
Sprint #4
Developing a continuous improvement ‘bingo’ tool.
Onward
Final reflection on how you have fared with Making It Happen.