Continuous Improvement

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. —Sam Walton
What do your customers really want? "More for less," of course! They want more value, more service, more consistent delivery, more accuracy, and ever more responsiveness.They want less hassle, less bureaucracy, less sales pressure -- and, they want to pay "less" for this "more." Unless you can provide your customers with "more for less," you can be assured they will find someone else who can, and sooner rather than later. There’s no magic to providing more for less, but it requires a management mindset that’s different from the norm--and that’s precisely what this book is about. The findings in the 2004-2005 Mindset Study, based on exclusive interviews with frontline executives, went into the making of this book. With clarity and insight, Spanyi has penned the definitive guide for business leaders who are determined to deliver more for less to their customers and shareholders.

We live in a complex world. People and organizations often don’t believe they have the time to perform the in-depth analyses required to solve problems. Instead, they take remedial actions to make the problem less visible and implement a patchwork of ad hoc solutions they hope will prevent recurrence. Then when the problem returns, they get frustrated—and the cycle repeats.

This book provides detailed steps for how to solve problems, focusing more heavily on the analytical process involved in finding the actual causes of problems. It does so using a large number of figures, diagrams, and tools useful for helping make our thinking visible. The primary focus is on solving repetitive problems, rather than performing investigations for major incidents/accidents. Most of the terminology used is everyday language and can therefore also be used for applications in their personal lives. Many of the examples will involve situations with which the reader will likely be familiar.

The focus of the book not on statistics but instead on the logic of finding causes. It has sometimes been described in training workshops as “Six Sigma lite”…problem solving without all the heavy statistics.

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.

What the business schools don't teach you to survive and flourish. Putting management theory into practice faces some major challenges. Some of the raw realities of modern work environments require a high level of intuition and judgement over and above scientific methodology alone. This book sets out the hard learnt experience of a senior Scotland Yard officer and centres on three themes: How to develop and look after yourself as an individual manager; how to make operations happen and work successfully; how to develop a high performance team around you. This book has many important messages for new managers, enabling them to survive and eventually flourish whilst guiding more experienced Directors to secure the holy grail of truly exceptional performance. It has equal relevance to those in the public, private and voluntary sector who have to translate strategy into action

Change can be hard. It is often difficult to conceive performing tasks in a different order, in a different place, at a different time, or in a different manner altogether. And this is only for the individual. When we talk about organizational change the difficulty increases exponentially with each individual that is added to the equation. Regardless of organizational improvement methodology (Lean, Six Sigma, ISO, Balanced Scorecard) as programs they are difficult to implement; as disciplines they are difficult to understand. This book uses as its basis a fable the story is not untrue, but it is not fact either. It is a story in which the group dynamics are real, the problems are valid, and the solutions legitimate. It asks you to consider a complex environment with multiple classes interacting between functional units with requirements that are perceived as exclusive and unique, and personalities that reinforce presumed boundaries. It asks you to follow along as all these individuals work together using the basics of four quality methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and Business Process Reengineering) to address the problems they face, discover solutions together, and move forward in their continuous performance improvement journey.

Your organizational transformation begins here!
Comprehensive, detailed, and easy to read and understand, How to Succeed with Continuous Improvement takes you through a real-life case study of one organization’s journey to a world-class continuous improvement process.