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Strategy Development Align strategy and improvement goals. Organizational Development Align culture with strategy. Process Design Work teams redesign key processes. Team Building Work teams manage and improve the daily work. Customer Projects Our customer highlights. Training Customized seminars for your organization. |
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Improving the performance of an organization, that is improving it's ability to deliver value added products and services, which meet the highest standards of quality, are produced in the shortest possible period of time, are delivered when the customer needs them and which are accompanied by the highest levels of customer service is no easy task. Thousand of companies have failed. Many have even picked themselves up and tried again. Only to fail one more time. Explaining why the task of improving the performance of large organizations is a difficult task is really quite simple. Large organizations are complex. Their systems are complex. Their organizational cultures and politics are complex. Their employees, both individually and collectively are complex. And their problems are complex.
Many organizations fail simply because they don't get the understanding and "buy in" of the executives and the employees who are, or will be affected, by the organization's performance problems and any solutions which may be put in place. In other words, they don't understand the strategic importance of solving their performance problems, and ultimately what the negative impact will be on them, as sales decline and jobs are lost.
Other organizations fail, because the organization is not structured to do the work properly and / or its people, at all levels, lack the skills to even perform at the levels required in order for the organization to succeed. In organizations like these, there is little or no chance of achieving improved performance without some major restructuring of the organization itself and a broad based campaign to raise the knowledge and skill levels of employees across the organization.
Another very common reason organizations fail, even in the context of the most sincere and committed effort to improve their performance, is simply not knowing how to go about analyzing and solving complex problems. In fact, these organizations fail more often than not because they trivalize the problem and adopt a "just fix it" mode, that generally makes things worse than better.
The Best Consultants addresses the first two of these common causes of failure by asking organizations to spend time on Strategy Development and Organization Development, before they try to attack their perceived causes of inadequate organizational performance.
It is at this point the Process Design or "Re-design" become the focus of an organization's performance improvement efforts. All human organizations are made of of a maze of processes, which are responsible for all of the work an organization gets done. A process is simply a series of activities, starting with some clear input and ending with some clear output, which creates a product or service for consumption internal or external to the organization. In order to improve an organization's performance, it is necessary that the processes affecting the performance in question be identified, analyzed, redesigned, tested in their new format, and implemented. THIS IS HARD WORK! And most organizations do not have the patience or the required experience to analyze and redesign complex processes, like marketing, sales, new product design, production planning, procurement, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, accounting, etc.
The Best Consultants uses a variety of time tested methodologies to help client organizations analyze and redesign key work processes, resulting in measurably improved performance. The Best Consultants' approach includes:
- Conducting training and coaching for employees at all levels on the concepts and tools used in process redesign. Each training class or coaching session is designed to address the involvement, issues and concerns of the specific employees being engaged and addresses employee groups, from the Board Room to the Front Line.
- Helping senior level staff identify, prioritize, and analyze the opportunities available within the organization for improving performance through process re-design..
- Helping senior level staff identify, define and staff projects that will quickly optimize key processes and improvement drivers.
- Developing effective project management structures that will ensure that each project has a solid business case and the controls required to ensure each project will achieve the desire performance results and the targeted ROI.
- Creating and deploying comprehensive training programs, at all levels, that will provide the organization's employees with the tools required to effectively analyze processes, redesign those processes, implement and test those processes, and finally evaluate the performance of those processes over time.
- Working with executives and middle management to create employee / management project teams chartered to analyze and redesign specific processes. Facilitating those teams as they work through the entire Process Re-design Process.
- Training client facilitators who can take over from The Best Consultants after several successull process re-designs and carry the organization forward in it's journey to re-design the organization and implement Continuous Improvemement as a way of life.
- Working with executives and managers at all levels to design and implement performance metrics that become the foundation of the continuous improvement culture and the basis for evaluating organizational performance over the long term.
- Working with executives and management to create a management structure that facilitates the successful management of improvement projects and ensures senior management's active involvement over the long term.
The Best Consultants uses a variety of Process Re-design Methodologies and Tools that have been proven over the years to be effective in designing and managing a successful Performance Improvement Program. These Methodologies and Tools include:
- Executive and Employee training in Strategy and Improvement Planning, Workplace Organization, Advanced Quality Systems, Lean Processing, Six Sigma, Team Based Organizations, and Organizational Excellence Systems.
- Strategy and Improvement Planning in which a variety of tools are used to evaluate an organization's performance, analyze that performance against the requirements for success in the marketplace and development of a long term improvement plan design to create both gradual continuous improvements and "step level" improvements in the journey to becoming a world class organization.
- Lean Processing in both the factory, the warehouse and the office. Lean Processing is the evolution of the Toyota Production System, that focuses on cycle time reductions, process re-design, and "real time" processing to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, cash flow, quality, capital investment requirements, inventory requirements and customer service.
- Six Sigma which is a methodology for the application of statistical methods to product development, manufacturing, customer relationship management, and procurement. Six Sigma provides the statistical tools to make Lean and Process redesign both data based and ultimately easier to implement.
- Day In Life Of (DILO) surveys, customer surveys, and process audits all of which are tools to provide performance data to analyze a process and reveal opportunities for improvement.
- Kaizen Blitzes which are carefully planned rapid improvement events designed to implement process improvements that can be achieved over relatively short time periods.
- Value Stream Mapping with is a tool for mapping enterprise level processes, identifying opportunities for improvement, and using these opportunities to create systems level improvement projects and / or to identify improvement projects at the front line level that may be addressed through a Kaizen Blitz or a longer term Project Improvement Team.
- Destructive testing, defects analysis labs, and mistake proofing all of which are tools to create a feedback loop from manufacturing and / or service delivery to improve the overall product / service design cycle.