Whilst working in many different areas of the service sector I have learned that there are many similarities to what on the face of it seem like diverse services. There is sometimes a need in each of these high transactional services like payroll or accounts payable, to understand visually the volume of work in progress and where bottlenecks are occurring. This is something that teams find really hard to visualise as most of the work in the this type of system is buried in IT systems.
The point of this blog is to ask the system thinking community if anyone has come across any way of help teams to see where the problems are in the system.
Saturday 29 November 2008
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Improving quality - nebusiness.co.uk
Here is a link to my local newspaper, it ran a number of Lean Articles on the August the 5th 2008. I was honored to make a small contribution.
Improving quality - nebusiness.co.uk
Improving quality - nebusiness.co.uk
Tuesday 11 March 2008
I.T. isnt all that
How many times have you been promised an IT system that will save you time and money, how often do you believe everything the salesperson/advert told you, I guess most (if not all) of the time. Yet time after time the promises are not delivered, the project don’t run on time, costs over run and ultimately the product does not deliver the goods.
Why do we allow this situation to continue, why don’t we understanding the real need for the IT solution in the first place and ensure it actually arrives on time and on budget.
There are probably many reasons for this all too familiar sounding story, but the primary reason is a lack of understand of the problem, too many times managers see a problem and react by calling in IT to solve it, without getting to the root cause of the problem and working with the teams involved in the work to improve the situation first.
How can the IT people truly understand the problem if they have not experienced the pain the teams in the work are going through, without seeing where the bottlenecks are in the system and without understanding what the customer of the system wants from it. The answer is - they CANNOT.
If organisations are going to truly benefit from any future potential IT investment then they must first truly understand the problem they are trying to tackle, and during this understanding involve the IT specialists, this will result in a solution that works, that will be delivered on time and to budget.
Why do we allow this situation to continue, why don’t we understanding the real need for the IT solution in the first place and ensure it actually arrives on time and on budget.
There are probably many reasons for this all too familiar sounding story, but the primary reason is a lack of understand of the problem, too many times managers see a problem and react by calling in IT to solve it, without getting to the root cause of the problem and working with the teams involved in the work to improve the situation first.
How can the IT people truly understand the problem if they have not experienced the pain the teams in the work are going through, without seeing where the bottlenecks are in the system and without understanding what the customer of the system wants from it. The answer is - they CANNOT.
If organisations are going to truly benefit from any future potential IT investment then they must first truly understand the problem they are trying to tackle, and during this understanding involve the IT specialists, this will result in a solution that works, that will be delivered on time and to budget.
Monday 4 February 2008
North East Business Improvement Blog
Welcome to my regular Blog about business improvement specifically here in the North East of England, the aim of the blog is to generate interest and debate around any improvement activities that are going on in the North Easts Businesses and Government Organisations.
I would like as many people as possible to share their experience of transforming their business in particular using system thinking or lean methodology.
I have been exposed to system thinking for a number of years now and find that when used to improve the business there are a number of key paybacks, namely an improvement in customer quality, a reduction in cost and increased staff morale.
The journey I have been on has taught many lessons, the first being, go and understand what your customer is asking of your business. There can be no excuses for any leader, manager or CEO going to listen to their customers demands, when you consider that most senior people in an organisation no longer listen to the customer on a daily basis, their own opinions, assumptions and strategies are probably based on what the customer wanted years ago when they were building their career.
We shall see where this blog takes us and try to understand what journey you the customer wants to take it on. Please can you feedback your thoughts and ideas for this blog as I want to be as interactive as possible.
I would like as many people as possible to share their experience of transforming their business in particular using system thinking or lean methodology.
I have been exposed to system thinking for a number of years now and find that when used to improve the business there are a number of key paybacks, namely an improvement in customer quality, a reduction in cost and increased staff morale.
The journey I have been on has taught many lessons, the first being, go and understand what your customer is asking of your business. There can be no excuses for any leader, manager or CEO going to listen to their customers demands, when you consider that most senior people in an organisation no longer listen to the customer on a daily basis, their own opinions, assumptions and strategies are probably based on what the customer wanted years ago when they were building their career.
We shall see where this blog takes us and try to understand what journey you the customer wants to take it on. Please can you feedback your thoughts and ideas for this blog as I want to be as interactive as possible.
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