I’ve been consulting in the service sector for over 10 years, working to teach process thinking in the “office” terms. It’s amazing how much money is wasted on “software” to help improve business processes before there is an awareness of general continuous improvement concepts across an organization and a team to improve the work methods. These two steps come first, just like the shop floor. Investments in software is like investing in machinery on the shopfloor. It’s the last step of implementing process improvements. Remember stories of GM in the 80′s implementing automation in their auto plants, all down the tube. Remember the last big capital expenditure project your company put in, things went wrong, it wasn’t perfect and expectations where probably never met. Too many people are looking for the microwave solutions, plug it in and have that 10 course meal all cook to profection. No one told them they needed to mix all the ingediants first.

Remember the steps to success
1. up the awareness of your people of process thinking
2. dive into the work method details
3. now look at simple machines or software solution to meet the needs of creating flow

Do this and you will spend 10X less and yeild 10X more.

You’ve done more than provoke “a little thought” – you’ve made me sit here and rethink everything I know about continual improvement & about how I prepare, deliver, critique, and adjust (my own version of PDCA) for seminars, workshops, and clients.

Thanks for the rambling!

Tom Southworth