The essence of our work is to help you simplify your work!
We work together with many kinds or businesses to create and apply more effective work processes.
In particular, we raise awareness of ‘invisible waste’ and help teams work towards its elimination and ensure that Lean Thinking becomes a part of the culture to ensure that it doesn’t recur.
Opening eyes to see invisible waste
We work together with the people responsible for the production of your goods and delivery of your services. These people have the greatest knowledge of your commercial offer and can make the largest contribution to its improvement. Generally speaking, most people are not knowingly wasteful and many are on a constant lookout for ways to make their productive processes more efficient.
Our role is to help take this attitude to its next level, shining the light on blindspots and empowering teams to belive that they can make a difference. We do this through the introduction of concepts and tools such as the 8 wastes, Muri & Mura as well as many of the principles of the Toyota Way, such as Get it Right First Time and the use of Visual Control to highlight successes and anomalies.
Common goals become more common still
All too often our roles within any organisation tend to separate us rather than unite us. We all have vital and important functions, but if we begin to perceive that our own personal roles are more important than those of others, we run the risk of creating dysfunctional working groups unable to communicate effectively. Our approach helps all key players to focus once again on their collective contributions to the final product through the value that each and every contributor adds at each step.
This approach creates a safe space in which different groups of stakeholders are able to work on issues which are limiting the final quality of the product (and ultimately the satisfaction of their clients) in an empowering and motivating environment. The renewed sense of a team with a common goal and a culture of sincere collaboration is one of the intangible benefits we bring to our clients.
Numbers tell no lies
Many change initiatives and projects fail to achieve the consensus from stakeholders that they should. Harvard Business Review at one point put the percentage of fails at 70%. There are a whole host of reasons why failure is so common, but perhaps some of the most important are:
- a lack of clear leadership and vision
- poor involvement of operative members of staff
- poor initial results
We have learned from the mistakes of others (and our own) to ensure that these three points are accounted for in the design and delivery of any project. Successful transformation projects require SPONSORSHIP from the Leaders and OWNERSHIP of the teams involved.
- we start with the vision and commitment of key players – without these, we don’t take a step further
- without operations involved, the initiative is top-down and subject to all kinds of alibis and even sabotage
- results are a fundamental motivator. However, in an age of instant gratification, expectations need to be set realistically and placed appropriately on a long-term timeline.
For this final reason, we pay a lot of attention to results and the way in which they are measured and communicated – transparency is the key.
All of this is aimed at the improvement of the bottom line.
Forever Better
We firmly believe that whilst our presence on your premises must have an end date, all the concepts and tools that we help to introduce need to become the ways of working of the team. We equip you with the ability to manage your long-term improvements in both your productive processes and your ability to evolve them through time on your own.
Most important though is the conviction that what really determines success in a competitive environment is our MINDSET!
Taking a leaf from the Agile Movement, we can see that Mindset > Skillset > Toolkit. Where Mindset is conducive to transformation, we concentrate on upskilling and the development of tools. Where a functional Mindset needs to be developed, we introduce appropriate tools and skills and highlight the results that their application can achieve to then go on and further development the behaviours which will reinforce a Mindset of Continual Improvement.