Tag: small business

Business Performance

Stop fixing and start improving

stop fixing problems and start improving

If you have a friend or acquaintance who is a business owner, I bet there is not one time you met that the conversation doesn’t gravitate toward business stuff.  As a result, you hear stories about the enterprise’s performance.  When things are not going as expected, you talk about things he or she want or should do in their business.  Moreover, they keep talking about problems and how they fix them.  The problem is that they should stop fixing and start improving processes.

Stop fixing and start improving

Richard is the owner and general manager of a chemical laboratory.  Every once in a while, I see him at a bar we both frequent. As we have friends in common, several times our groups get together to have a good time.  Inevitably, I heard Richard talking about the problems he had in the lab many times.  However, it took me several months to convince him to do something about it.

During the time that Richard was talking about inefficiencies, his business was suffering.  ChemTest was not releasing results on time or keeping up with demand.  Therefore, the customer service rate was declining.  Also, he was missing the opportunity to grow the business.  Every day, Richard and his team were working very hard to get caught up with the tests.  Richard thought he was fixing the problem by hiring a new lab technician.  

But the real problem is that he was not fixing this problem.  Even more, he did not fix the situation of running out of reagents by increasing the inventory level.  Neither the testing errors by hiring a laboratory helper to organize and label samples.  Richard was trying to fix problems by throwing more resources into the business.  In fact, instead of fixing, he should have been improving the processes.

This is the time to stop fixing and start improving

Like, Richard, many business owners or leaders are focus on fixing problems day in and day out.  But there are two problems with that approach.  First, probably they are only dealing with the symptoms of the problem, not the cause.  Hence, there is no such thing as fixing or solving the problem.  And second, they are not improving the business processes.

Process improvement using simple and common-sense solutions is the best way to eliminate waste and increase safety, quality, and efficiency.  It is also the best way to achieve the fastest delivery times without spending lots of money.  Continuous improvement is a people focus system.  Leadership takes care of the team and the team takes care of the problems.  Through skills development and lean thinking, the team learns to improve their work area and processes.

As a consequence, leadership would have more time to think about improvements, new products, and how to grow the business.  How long have you been thinking about doing something to change your business performance?  Have you considered a continuous improvement strategy?  These days, more than ever it is critical to building a flexible business capable of adjusting to market changes as fast as possible.  This is the time to stop fixing, and start improving.

Customer Experience

Do you know what is the best thing you can do to achieve Customer Satisfaction?

If you have a business, then you know how important it is to know how much the customers like your service or product. They are the best source for learning about improvement opportunities, their ideas tell you what needs to be improved, and sometimes they even suggest solutions. You need to listen to the Voice of the Customer, if you and your team understand this, you won half of the battle, already.

I remember a situation years ago when one of our most important clients was complaining about a recurring problem. The plant was consistently delivering late, causing them problems with their customers. The root cause analysis pointed to the packaging department, where the team was encouraged to have larger runs. Their goal was to avoid changing products to minimize downtime.

In a different case, the warehouse team was ignoring the 360º inspection before shipping to save time. The customer was receiving products with defects. They wanted to achieve the goal of two hours trucks turn around. The problem with these two examples is that neither of those team leaders understood the relationship between what they do and customer satisfaction.

As a business owner, you need to ensure that your business strategy and goals are aligned. Your team must know the priorities. Encourage asking questions when they have doubts. Talked with them about customer expectations and how their work affects them.

The best thing you can do to achieve your customer satisfaction goals is to accept that your team is first. It has to be a priority for you to train and develop your people. Provide them with the tools and information they need to do their job and opportunities to learn more and grow. If the team feels appreciated, they will be your secret weapon to achieve success. When you take care of your team, they take care of the customers.

CI Basics

How can you create changes in your business?

Often business owners see something that tells them that something different needs to be done. Perhaps it is a recurring problem or realizes that the business is not reaching financial goals. What is the solution? You need to identify what areas need change and prioritize. How can you create changes? There are two major ways to create change: innovation and continuous improvement.

Create changes by innovating, or not.

More often than not, innovation is a high-cost solution. While it is necessary to keep yourself ahead of the game, I like to start somewhere else. My first stop in creating improvements is to use common sense, low-cost solutions.

Common-sense solutions

What are common-sense solutions? It is to approach a problem using good judgment. For example, let’s use one of my favorite low-cost tools: housekeeping and organization. Will you agree that keeping a clean and organized workplace is common-sense? Why do you think it is? Perhaps because you know some of the following facts.

  • Clutter and disorganization are against productivity, reduces the ability to concentrate.
  • A messy workplace causes anxiety, stress, and has the potential to foster a negative state of mind, like feeling overwhelmed.

Your good judgment tells you that an efficient workplace is cleaned and organized. Therefore, a lack of cleaning and organization is a visual indicator of inefficiency. You know that this condition has to change.

Two different ways to create changes

To improve housekeeping, you can buy a fancy computerized program or use a simple low-cost solution. Your new high-cost application will help you to create checklists, assign responsibilities and follow up on the cleaning activities. But it will not help you to ensure the workplace is clean and organized.

An alternative is to use 5S, a housekeeping and organization program. This program along with waste elimination and standardization are the basics of practicing continuous improvement. CI is about creating small changes using common-sense solutions that are easy to implement and follow. When you add up all those changes you will see a huge improvement in the overall performance of your business.

CI Basics

What is Continuous Improvement and why you need it?

Continuous Improvement is a business management system designed to create customer value with fewer resources.

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.

Do you want to reduce operating expenses? Do you want to start the year knowing what to do? Subscribe or follow this page to learn simple and effective process improvement solutions.