Do you want to increase the net profit of your business? One way to do this is to reduce the operating expense. How do you do that? Where do you start? Have you ever considered a continuous improvement strategy?
What is continuous improvement?
You want to learn and practice Continuous Improvement (CI). CI or Lean is a business management system designed to create customer value with fewer resources. This system is a group of principles, best practices, and tools. Lean was born from the necessity to be more efficient and be able to operate with fewer resources. For that reason, it is the ideal tool to reduce costs.
Although CI was born from the necessity to become more efficient, it is not a cost reduction tool. It is a peoples’ system which means that the focus is to develop the team skills and help them grow. When you take care of your team treating them with respect and helping them to develop their skills and contribute they take care of your customers. Also, they will help you to improve processes and minimize costs.
Contrary to common perception, Lean or CI is not for manufacturing companies only. CI works in the office, retail, warehouse, mechanic shops, medical and other types of businesses.
How can it help you?
With CI tools, you can draw a map to see how the information or product flows in your business and identify inefficiencies or waste. Once you know the problem, you can start working on solutions. There are various mapping tools used to assess the process flow and identify waste. Some of them are value stream map, process map, and swim-lane map. Also, there are tools for housekeeping and organization, inventory control, and process standardization.
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