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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
October 2018 #10231 Page #20
Constructing a Roadmap to Operational Excellence Part 2: Continuing the Journey of 7 Steps Ben Hershey, President & Coach 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC
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s discussed in “Part 1: Beginning a Journey of 7 Steps,” we all aspire to have a state of operational excellence in our organizations, which is easier said than done. Operational excellence is about more than simply adjusting the current way of doing things, although that is how it is often perceived. For component manufactures, LBMs, and millwork companies, operational excellence is about setting up a systematic operational structure to identify and capitalize on improvement opportunities, and it is equally reliant on harnessing non-technical elements like organizational culture or advanced processes or automation.
7 Steps to Operational Excellence As mentioned last month, there are not just 7 Steps nor are these written in stone. The 7 steps represent a general roadmap that our industry can follow toward the goal of operational excellence, independent of any allegiance to a particular improvement methodology. The first three steps were: Step 1: Discover &Solicit Ideas Step 2: Benchmark & Validate Step 3: Evaluate & Quantify Here are the final four steps. Step 4: Simplify & Standardize Having worked out what you’re going to change and why, I sometimes see many companies jump straight in and start to create new processes or automate existing ones. However, sometimes this just results in delivering the wrong things faster! Instead, the first implementation stage of improving the way you work is to consider how to simplify the work by asking if there are steps and activities that you don’t actually need to do – classic waste elimination. Once you have identified your preferred processes and practices and simplified them as appropriate, then you can consider standardization. What Success at this Step Looks Like: You have a clear idea of processes and practices you need in your operation and wasteful activities have been reduced. Continued next page
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