Productivity Improvement Tips

I want to share some productivity improvement tips with you.

I spend the majority of my time delivering process improvement projects for a variety of clients; different sectors – similar operational challenges. When we first meet, many clients ask me ‘how do you produce improvement plans so quickly?’

In this article I am going to share with you one of the tools I have up my sleeve – PDCA Complete . PDCA Complete, a simple to use application, allows you to use a variety of improvement methods and efficiently manage the resulting actions. Or, in other words, it takes less time is to achieve better results for the business when you use PDCA Complete.

Let me give you an example of some productivity improvement tips in action.

I was on an assignment that needed a quick turnaround. The business was profitable and successful. but managers running the business experienced blood, sweat and tears to achieve their results.

My task was clear; find out how to streamline a specific maintenance program. The client scheduled this program at six weeks per vehicle being overhauled. In my client’s eyes, anything less than six weeks was a good result.

Productivity Improvement Tips - Audit

Apart from the six weeks timescale per vehicle there were few performance standards that I could use to give me some context. So, I set up a new project in the PDCA Complete app and created an audit to find out exactly what they did and didn’t have. I toured the business speaking to staff and operatives as I explored the process.

Productivity Improvement Tips - CCC

Any concerns that I captured during my travels were inputted into PDCA Complete using the Concern – Cause – Countermeasure (CCC) function. Within hours I started to build up a picture of how the business function as a whole.

Productivity Improvement Tips - Workflows

Next, I delved into a high level process flow of the maintenance process  I used the Workflow function of PDCA Complete and started to simplify this maintenance process. I then scheduled it on a set frequency. I also then copied it to other workflows for other machines and schedules these too. Now the PM tasks all appear in the equipment technician My Task page.

Productivity Improvement Tips - Action Plan

Two days in I reviewed the audit results, used PDCA Complete built-in tools, and converted these results into practical actions. I did the same with the CCC results, again converting their outputs into actions.

By the end of day four I created an action plan that was fully prioritized, relevant, and highly practical.

I shared the plan with the Head of Maintenance for this organization. He was flabbergasted that such a comprehensive plan could be created in such a short period of time.

As much as I love the praise, it was a simple fact that the PDCA Complete software allows you to ‘chuck’ all of your observations into the system and then let it process it into a prioritized action plan.

Follow the plan and you will get the best results for your business in the shortest period of time possible.

Low Hanging Fruit - BCS Scores

PDCA Complete helps you identify the easy to manage items with the BCS Score. Deal with these low hanging fruit first. In my example, this included

• stock replenishment,
  
• scheduling clashes
• team allocation

Manage Change

As the intervention carried on, I used PDCA Complete to manage the change process, and new items were added as they were discovered. But, what was the outcome I hear you ask…

Outcome

Well, my client said anything less than six weeks would be a good result. By the time the maintenance team and I finished with their process, three weeks later, we got the process down to five days.

In fact, they got so fast at overhauling the vehicles they had to run the team in a Kan-Ban fashion. Their supply now exceeded their demand. For the same amount of time, as before the project, the team obliterated the back log of maintenance works and could now support their sister teams. Great results!

More Productivity Improvement Tips

Within this article I discussed only five of the tools available in PDCA Complete. The software also includes waste walking, 5S, meetings management, and action reporting tools. Using any combination of these functions with your productivity improvement projects can make a huge difference to the effectiveness and speed of delivery of your improvements.

Freely start using PDCA Complete today and watch the results as you accelerate the rate of improvement your business experiences.