Many of the clients that I work with operate out of multiple national and global sites. This then naturally gives rise to the question ‘how do we deal with these geographic variations?’ I doubt I need to explain in too much detail why organisations want to get rid of their variations, there can’t be two […]
Often, when I talk about process management and explain the benefits of having clear processes with detailed work instructions, I’ll get pushback to the effect ‘we hire professionals to do a job, we don’t want to tell them exactly how to do it’. In short, the push back is on how much detail the process […]
Driving engagement with Process Management requires more than just telling your people that they must now be process driven. Lets consider the Prosci change management model. What this model explains is that any initiative requires us to manage not just the technical side of change (in this case documenting our processes), but also we must […]
Process Management and Agile: Friend or Foe? Periodically when talking about process management, I will be told “process management isn’t for us, we’re agile”. Is agile a fair excuse to avoid process management? Short answer, in my opinion, absolutely not; in fact, an agile environment makes process management more important if anything. Here’s why. […]
Speaking with Risk Managers, I find that, almost always, risk management is performed in Excel. There’ll be a ‘Risk Register’ file, where (generally) the Risk team will be responsible for documenting an exhaustive list of risks in one column, and in another column treatments/ controls for those risks. This Excel file typically lives in […]
Our client was a global corporation with a head office in the USA. It supplies products to customers in 135 countries and employs over 12,000 employees worldwide generating revenue of over US $2 billion. Although successful, the business recognized significant opportunities for improvement back in 2020, aspiring to develop their own version of the Toyota […]
Process Management: The Ikea Approach What does Ikea and Process Management have in common? The decentralisation of the build phase. One way in which Ikea is able to offer furniture at a price point below its competition is that, unlike its competitors who pay labourers to assemble their furniture, Ikea makes use […]
Over the last five years, we have been supporting one of Europe’s largest utility companies to implement a multi-site/organisation-wide Lean programme. This paper shares how this organisation built both Leadership and Lean Capability throughout their organisation, as well as how the transformation programme has continued to deliver a return on investment.
When embarking on an improvement journey, organisations too often give into temptation and jump directly to process improvement, either by designing a new, optimised, Lean process, or attempting to immediately create a digitised, automated version of their existing manual process. While this approach of skipping ahead to your desired future state may seem like […]
Well, ok we may be a bit slow starting but I promise you that we have caught up fast. Over the past three years with the impact of COVID19 we have seen a significant shift in the way we all learn, we have become more comfortable with the use of technology in how we develop […]
I came in for a bit of teasing by a work colleague recently over my uneasiness with the term True North. We were working with a leadership community in a large automotive business, and he used the term True North, which brought about an obvious and over exaggerated wince from me which raised a few […]
Too often organisations think that successfully rolling out process management (‘PM’) means simply providing their team members with a process mapping tool, some basic training, and expecting it to just get done. This approach will invariably result in either nothing getting done, or processes being mapped but never followed or updated. While PM might not […]
Successful Re-Accreditation of Training, Assessment & Certification Services to the Lean Competency System (licensed by Cardiff University) S A Partners and Cardiff University – through the Lean Enterprise Research Centre and the Lean Competency System have a long-standing heritage. (Link to relevant page on sapartners web site?) After 12 years, we are now celebrating the successful […]
Check out our latest white paper on Packaging Changeovers in the Pharmaceutical Industry Over the last twenty-five years, pharmaceutical companies and packaging operations have struggled to respond quickly to market demand. Added to this, operational inefficiencies; the increase in the number and complexity of product configurations; and the ongoing demand for compliance has made […]
In our recent webinar on the Future of Lean we explored the need for organisations to embrace digital solutions to enable them to deploy continuous improvement more efficiently. You can watch the webinar here. It is clear that embracing technology will enable organisations to reduce costs, improve productivity and be more flexible. Our work with blue-chip organisations on developing improvement strategies and roadmaps incorporates the adoption of the right technologies to suit the demands of our […]
