Business Transformation 101

Business Transformation 101

por William T Fejes Jr

Administración

Temporada 1

Why I Hate Monuments

The monuments mentioned in the title of this podcast are not what most people would think of when they hear the word monument. The monuments in this podcast are not the Lincoln Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or other similar commemorative structures. Rather the monuments discussed in this podcast are big, expensive, inflexible pieces of equipment or structures found in a process. The reason to hate, or at the very least strongly dislike these monuments, is they impede one-piece flow, flexibility, and agility. They effectively tie one-hand behind your team’s back when they are attempting to make transformational improvements.

Customer Service Transformation -- Podcast with Janyce Fadden

In Volume 1, we stated that to ensure the business provides consistent, sustainable, improving performance you need to deploy robust processes in all aspects of the business. We also noted that Lean applies to any process and therefore is applicable across the business and must be deployed across the enterprise. Earlier in my career, I was part of the leadership team at Pacific Scientific or PacSci that had the good fortune of learning about lean implementation when the company was acquired by Danaher. Our team had never heard of Danaher or Lean prior to the acquisition but we embraced the lean philosophy and successfully utilized it to make significant improvements in the company’s performance. Today’s podcast is focused on a transformational improvement made in the customer service department at PacSci. This department consisted of 18 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), 6 Application Engineers (AEs), and a Customer Service Manager.

Standard Work

Standard work is a tool used to design processes which optimize the flow of material, eliminate non-value-add work, properly load the work to the operators, and create flow. It provides a structured playbook that describes in detail the way a value stream, cell, or process should operate under different levels of demand.

Value Stream Mapping

Once the leadership team of the business has made the commitment to embrace Lean as their philosophy and strategy for driving execution of their business strategy, they need to obtain a sensei (an experienced practitioner of Lean who has been there and done that) to teach and facilitate the beginning of the Lean journey. Note that this sensei could be a member or members of the leadership team that fit the sensei requirements. The next step for the business is to identify and map the full value streams for the portfolio of products and/or services offered. Value Stream Mapping or VSM is the tool for mapping the material flow and information flow through an entire value stream. The map covers the value stream starting at suppliers and ending with customers. It shows the total value-add time and total lead-time through the process.

A Primer on Lean

The Business Transformation 101 series is built around People, Plans, and Processes. Prior podcasts in this series focused on People and Plans. The third component, Processes, focuses on the Lean Processes that are utilized to execute the business plans, both short-term and long-term, and deliver results for the customers and shareholders. This podcast provides a Primer on Lean and the philosophy of Lean. Many people think of manufacturing when the topic of Lean is brought up but Lean applies to any process and therefore should be applied across the entire enterprise. It applies in the office as well as in manufacturing. It applies to product businesses as well as service businesses – “service” can be substituted for “product” anywhere in this discussion. Ensure that the application of Lean is embraced in all aspects of the business – if there is a process lean it out, if there is not a process, create a lean one.

Achieving Diversity in the Leadership Team

In 2020, the level of serious discussions going on about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the US has exploded. This podcast delves into this topic with a focus on diversity in today’s businesses and more specifically Diversity of business leadership teams. Change starts at the top so transforming Diversity in the leadership ranks will drive transformation down through the entire organization.

Rapid Innovation Sprints with Phil Samuel

In last week’s podcast, we provided an overview of New Product Blueprinting which is one potential new product development process. This week’s podcast explores another potential new product development process, Rapid Innovation, with Dr. Phil Samuel of the Lean Methods Group.

New Product Blueprinting with Dan Adams

In last week’s podcast, we provided an overview of Product Life Cycles and a typical New Product Development or NPD process. This week we do a deeper dive on one well-designed NPD process called New Product Blueprinting. This process was developed by Dan Adams and his team at The AIM Institute.

New Product Development (NPD) Processes

In prior podcasts, we have discussed building a team of A-Players and turning those A-Players loose to build a solid Short-Term Annual Operating Plan and a Long-Term Strategic Plan. Executing on those plans to drive strong results will require the deployment of robust, lean processes. We will cover a vast array of lean processes in the future starting with New Product Development (NPD) processes since they are critical to achieving above market, profitable, growth. This podcastwill provide an overview of the NPD process. Note that many of the same ideas and concepts for new product development also apply to developing new services. We will use the word “product” in this podcast but feel free to substitute the word “service” to apply these processes to the development of new service offerings. We will do a deeper dive on two specific NPD process approaches, New Product Blueprinting and Rapid Innovation, in the next two podcasts.

Strategy Deployment, Turning Strategic Plans into Reality

In our podcast two weeks ago, we provided an overview of Long-Term or Strategic Planning. Last week we did a deep dive on the Strategy Creation process with Dr. Phil Samuel of the Lean Methods Group which is one of the components of Strategic Planning. This week we are going to do a deep dive on the Strategy Execution component which is implemented using the Strategy Deployment or SD process. I have successfully utilized this process over the past 20+ years in more than 15 businesses ranging in size from $20M to $450M in revenue.

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