Why focus on HOW?

• Drives which and how many resources we need (costs)
• Drives effectiveness and efficiency both
• You've been told you have to do it
• Speed
• Cost reductions demanded by customers
• Some form of chaos
• Cost challenges
• Past disasters and the need to avoid those in the future
• The need and desire to get better
• Late deliveries or lead times too long
• Difficulty in identifying underlying issues/problems
• Take the guess work out of the business
• Not seeing the results from improvement efforts
• Competition
• Errors
• Customer  (or other stakeholder) unhappiness
• More effective use of technology
• To automate repetitive tasks and streamline those that don't directly add value

Over the last 20 years, there have been all kinds of buzzwords in this area including TQM, BPR, Lean, AGILE, Six Sigma, ERP, MRPII,  TOC, WCM, Kaizen, CIT, …  Unfortunately, implementing a buzzword program more often than not results little lasting improvement . This is not because many of the ideas were powerful but largely because implementing goals, strategies and actions by recipe without much thought doesn't usually work.

AGILEdge recommendation:   

Use common sense; learn from both the success and failures in the efforts above; recognize that office or non-manufacturing processes have similarities but also great differences from manufacturing processes; success comes from  understanding then thinking then doing then checking, not following a buzzword blueprint (which typically leads to a temporary feeling of getting something done and some localized improvements but no overall results). Finally, success comes from integrating new ideas and localized gains into the organization through a conscious process.

The AGILEdge People-Process Performance program incorporates the recommendations above and is a program that creates understanding, facilitates thinking and effective decision making, leads to effective actions and as a result improves people and processes in organizations for greatly reduced costs and improved competitiveness and growth prospects.