Warehouses and distribution centers are more and more being thought of as very strategic aspects of the supply chain and can be a gold mine for process improvement efforts.  Think about it, the warehouse directly shapes the experience customers have with your company.  Are products they need in stock? Are they getting what they ordered, when and where they need it? Does their product arrive undamaged, with an accurate invoice and documentation?  The bottom line is that your warehouses and DCs are definitely on the critical path to your customer.

What about other business-centric issues?  Production losses, inefficient pick and pack methods, inefficient use of labor, poor warehouse layout, etc all drain time, resources, and money. Lean, and a well-executed CI program in general, can help you get control of ALL of these things to streamline the entire order fulfillment process, from order receipt to the time of shipping. You can reduce cost, reduce order cycle time, and optimize labor …. And that is a WIN no matter how you look at it.  We’ve worked with a number of warehousing and distribution operations and have seen first-hand the impact that Lean and CI can have.

this short Executive Brief that discusses the importance of CI for companies whose business success is a clear function of effective and efficient warehouse and distribution operations – namely 3PLs.  Relevant reading even if you’re not a 3PL, but have warehousing and distribution operations.

I would argue that it’s difficult to justify NOT using Lean or other basic process improvement approaches in warehousing and distribution operations, as long as you keep it pragmatic and practical:

• Leverage the personnel and talent you likely already have working in its supply chain operations. No “super skills” should be required.
• Do it in a way that your people can coordinate and manage with their “day job” responsibilities. Don’t set up recipe for failure by making it too burdensome
• Make sure eliminating waste and inefficiency is viewed as a major positive, a win-win across the board, not something people fear is going to cost them their job.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss how Lean and continuous improvement might be applied in your warehouses and distribution operations.

Organizations that choose one-off solutions to react to regulatory and compliance requirements on a case-by-case basis, as they are impacted by them, will spend 10x as much as those who choose to design and implement business processes that have measurement, visibility, and proper controls built into them from the start ….

I believe it was Gartner that made this assertion some years back, and it has proven to be true for many.  Organizations with a solid process infrastructure already have much of what they need deal with compliance requirements. The fundamental tenets of good process management include measurement, visibility, predictability, consistency, and repeatability, and business practices implemented with these elements in place can easily be transferred into specific controls that can be measured and reported on a regular basis.    Organizations that do not have a good process infrastructure in place may find themselves expending huge resources to redesign bad processes and systems when new requirements come down the line, as they always do.  Ouch.

our short executive brief that discusses the importance of process management in meeting compliance challenges

If your company is like most, you face growing regulatory and compliance demands that absorb time, money, and other valuable resources and, ultimately, sap your competitiveness. However painful, this is reality and faced with these realities, you want to find a way to meet compliance requirements that is objective, reliable, and efficient. Merely managing the issue by opinion can be very dangerous and expensive. Opinions, not matter how smart the “opiner”, have a tendency to not match reality. A better answer is to drive compliance to an objective, measurable specification.  Management by fear can be even more expensive, inducing you to greatly overspend on compliance and to shy away from reasonably acceptable risks that could mean far better business results.

And, let’s be clear, policies and procedures are not controls. A policy merely states an intention to do something; a control ensures that it is done, done repeatedly, and done up to standard. Moreover, policies have to be read, understood, and remembered, all of which opens many possible routes to failure.

Bottom line — work is accomplished through processes – and in no other way.  To reliably achieve compliance you must be able to improve those work processes or design new ones. In other words, the way in which you meet a requirement must be embedded in the work itself, not merely displayed on a policy document. In order to sustain compliance, you must be able to establish measurements and controls within those processes. Certainly, you may have policies that apply, but the way in which you build, operate, and control work processes constitutes how we meet a requirement.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss how basic process management and improvement approaches might help with your compliance challenges.

Organizations are increasingly adding tried and true Lean principles, tools and techniques to their continuous improvement initiatives to eliminate waste, improve customer satisfaction and reduce unnecessary costs.  And rightly so.  Successful Lean routinely reduce operating costs 20% – 40% and cycle time by even greater margins, and those cost reductions often go straight to the bottom line.

Traditionally, in applying Lean, trained teams identify then eliminate or significantly reduce the non-value added activities and related costs for specific processes within their operation.  But what if there are no “trained teams”?  What if process boundaries are unclear in a functionally silo’d organization?  Does this mean you can’t do anything to get results until significant infrastructure is in place?  I think not.

a short overview of our approach to applying lean at an operations level to internal service functions

We’ve found that Lean concepts and tools can be leveraged at a higher, function or operation level  very effectively.  The good news is that this approach delivers impressive business results on its own in the short term AND sets the stage for even more impactful process level improvements.  This is especially true for back office / internal service operations like HR, finance, IT, sales and marketing, supply chain management, etc.

Lean applied at an Operation Level for internal service and back office functions like HR, Finance, Procurement, IT, Marketing and Sales, and Supply Chain Management can make an immediate business impact …

The idea is to identify a complete business operation‘s most impactful cost drivers, BEFORE tightening focus to any process/subprocess in the value stream.  For those of you that have done Lean at the process level, I know this sounds a bit strange and your first thought may be that the scope will be too big and nothing will get done. But, our experience is that this can work very well and be very impactful:

• It can serve as a front-end audit function, greatly helping to identify next tier focus areas.
• It recognizes and works within functional boundaries that exist in the enterprise, as opposed to attempting to force artificial process boundaries that, while may be desirable, do not exist
• It maps and costs all key value streams of a targeted business function or sub-function, a necessary prerequisite for lower level improvements
• Attacks waste organization wide,  in both the supply-side (internal function itself) and demand-side (customer, consumer of the output).
• It consistently identifies low hanging fruit opportunities that can be realized immediately
• It can be used to jumpstart a new lean initiative or address unrealized opportunities from earlier lean events.

Lean Operations (lean applied at an high-level operations level) can definitely be a powerful tool for enterprises that are looking for immediate cost savings and/or performance improvements in internal service operations, but don’t have the desire/bandwidth/budget to start up a formal Continuous Improvement program.   It can be applied to an entire operation (e.g. HR, finance, Legal, IT, etc)  in a relatively short time period, and it does not require a big investment in training and infrastructure.  For those organizations that do want to move to a more structured Continuous Improvement program, it can be an excellent way to jumpstart a BPM, Lean, Six Sigma, etc. program

Need to improve performance or lower costs in internal service functions like Human Resources (HR), Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain, IT, Marketing and Sales, or any other back office type function?   Contact me to learn more about our approach to applying lean at an operations level.

We’ve been working with a number of customers of late that are trying to improve service delivery processes, and move into the differentiating realm of service innovation.  In these very large enterprises, it’s always a challenge to get organizations to change behavior.  Immediately, voices start rising, touting the need for change management.

This is another of those terms that can have a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people.  Wikipedia defines change management as a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. If you google “change management”, you really enter the swamp.   Even if we narrow change management to the business / process improvement world that we at SSQ live in, there is still a lot of confusion.  How do you sort it all out?

our BPM Overview presentation

In the CI world, companies want and need to markedly improve their value-generating processes (value stream), but the question becomes how do you get people to embrace the changes that come as part of improving?  How do we get them to embrace the overall effort to improve processes, and theoretically improve service delivery?  Do we really have to indoctrinate them into some new philosophy of change?

Personally, I don’t think so.  I think that many times change management becomes a problem because people don’t have a clear picture of 3 simple (not really) things:

1. where they are now,
2. where they need to be
3. why they need to get there.

Most organizations have plenty of smart people (I know … there are exceptions!)  .  The fundamental trick to change management really boils down to getting all those smart people pulling in the same direction.   If you can get clarity around the 3 simple things above, you might be surprised to see that change management is not the big issue you thought it was.

I’ve used the term simple to describe these three things above, but getting there can be anything but.  With our engagements, we spend significant time on the front ending trying to get these answers, and I can assure you that it can be challenging.  But, we get there, and I firmly believe our success rates with business improvement efforts are better because of it.

There are other ways I’m sure, but we use a structured approach that attacks the problem by:

1. Understanding, for both the customer (voice of the customer) and the business (voice of the business), what constitutes high-performance and turning that into clearly defined metrics (efficiency and effectiveness).  We are looking for gaps in these indicators, between current state and where we need to be.
2. Understanding the top-level value stream from a process perspective (not function), the things that have to happen to deliver your services or products, and create customer and business value
3. Identifying metrics at the process level (VOP), and making sure they are aligned with top level VOB and VOC (#1).  Like #1, we are looking for the gaps.
4. Defining an objective prioritization scheme based on voice of the customer and voice of the business.
5. Identifying improvement ideas from the gaps, and evaluating and prioritizing those ideas objectively based on #4.  A prioritized project pipeline.
6. Turning high-value project ideas (business cases) into tightly scoped improvement projects that are clearly aligned with very visible objectives (#1)

Of course, this is over simplified. There’s a lot of work happening between the spaces, but think about it and ask … Is change management really as simple as being able to see clearly? As always, I welcome your thoughts on this.  Comment or contact me directly if you prefer.

I talk to companies every day about how they can best roll out business performance and process improvement programs.  Now, just to level-set, we aren’t zealots here pushing any one-size-fits-all model for programs. We do have some key principles that we adhere to when designing programs though. One of these is that it’s likely not feasible to have a program that builds infrastructure and trains for many months, before ever delivering any quantifiable return. That is simply not the world most of our clients live in these days.   Our philosophy is that it is always advantageous for the program to deliver near-immediate, visible, and quantifiable impact.

When looking at an enterprise, more often than not, we find that basic process management/improvement and Lean (i.e. Lean Enterprise, Lean Process, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Product or any of the other labels floating around out there) can solve a lot of high impact business problems, without incurring high training and infrastructure costs, and are the right place to start.

Lean Process Improvement efforts can yield big results fast, without big investment or big risk …

However, I get a lot of questions dealing with how an organization can get started with basic process management and Lean Enterprise, and how to fit in to an overall, enterprise wide process improvement / CI program strategy.    This is a good question in that, in the past, it was almost always preached that Process Improvement deployments (Six Sigma, Lean, etc) had to be top-down.  Start with executives to get support, develop champions, select projects, train black belts, build a 3-year plan, etc, and grow from there.  The challenge with this approach is that it requires a hefty up-front investment and it takes a long time before results are seen.  Read ….. high cost .. high risk!

our new Lean QuickStart powerpoint presentation.

In today’s business climate, this is simply not palatable for a lot of organizations.  For them, an approach that is much less top-down, and much more focused on near term, bottom line results may be far more attractive.  So, here is an approach sequence that I’ve seen effective over and over

1. Work with business leaders to identify pilot areas of the enterprise
2. Identify specific focus areas and business cases in that area(s)
3. Refine those down to a set of well-defined project charters, segmented by the nature of the problem (defect, cost, cycle time, etc), scale, and perceived complexity.
4. Select a set of low-hanging-fruit projects that can likely be solved in a relatively short amount of time and with basic lean and quality toolsets
5. Run 1 or more workshops with specific project teams, with specific well-defined projects that can be executed in 2-5 weeks.
6. Track real savings and ROI on projects, and publicize/promote heavily internally
7. After one or more workshops, train champions /sponsors and develop a formal project selection and prioritization methodology (see my recent post on this).  Refine continuously.
8. Continue with more workshops, to a broader segment of the enterprise

Processes are cleaned up, waste and complexity removed, measurement systems are put in place, and real bottom-line results are realized.  Results drive interest and commitment, so it becomes easier to get the broader organization engaged.  For enterprises that have done little formal process improvement work (or a lot for that matter), there will most assuredly be many Lean projects to be executed, yielding fast and consistent results. And, soon enough, larger and more complex problems that require higher level capability (e.g. six sigma) will show themselves.  Then, and only then, do you bridge up to and invest in the next level of capability …. Pay-as-you-go.

These efforts can easily and painlessly run in parallel with and, indeed, support and pay for the broader activities that are required to make the overall process improvement effort successful long-term, namely identifying CTQ measures for voice of the customer (VOC) and voice of the business (VOB), characterizing value streams and establishing process indicators and metrics, building a mechanism to constantly identify high value improvement opportunities (i.e. project pipeline), and constantly defining and executing improvement projects.

Contact me if talk about whether this model could work for your enterprise.

Capturing Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a critical first step in aligning your product or service delivery organization to the real needs, wants, and desires of your customer. Pretty common sense, right? But, when someone says “I’ve captured the voice of the customer”, what does that really mean?

Any interaction with the customer is an opportunity to capture VOC, but I would argue that a more proactive and structured approach may yield more useful and actionable information from the customer. Understand what’s important, from the customer’s perspective, clearly define it and make it measurable, then measure your performance. Sounds simple, right?

a short module on understanding customer requirements and the Kano Model

Well, not so fast. The relationship between how you perform and what the customer sees as real value is not always simple or direct. Many times, organizations are left utterly bewildered after making some “major” performance improvement only to find that the customer never even noticed! I’ve even seen a case where a business process outsourcer assumed an agreed upon SLA was their VOC, met every single measure in that “VOC”, and then lost the customer! How could this happen? Well, the customer expected them to optimize and improve the process for them, not just run it at current performance levels and meet the SLA. Their ideas of “Value” were very different.

One good way to look at customer requirements is through the lens of the “Kano Model”. Dr. Kano developed a model of the relationship between service or product delivery performance on the one hand, and value as perceived by the customer on the other. It is very simple and can be extremely useful in understanding the relationship between what you do and how that relates to what the customer perceives as value. The model defines 3 categories of customer requirements: basic, performance, and excitement.

Basic. These are the requirements that are just taken for granted. Customers will rarely mention them, because they are just expected. In the airline industry, getting to your destination in one piece is an example of a basic requirement. No matter how well you deliver on basic requirements, your customer will never be more than neutral in terms of satisfaction or perceived value. But fail to deliver one of these requirements and you can bet you’ll have a very dissatisfied customer, one that is likely to be out the door.

Bottom Line: Basic requirements are really only noticed when they aren’t met …..

Performance. These are the things that customers want, but don’t necessarily expect in all cases. They are the things that usually make up a service level agreement (SLA). Performance characteristics include faster service, lower cost, higher reliability, etc. They are usually stated by the customer, in some detail, and meeting them will drive customer satisfaction to some degree, and sales. But they do not guarantee customer loyalty (e.g. earlier example of business process outsourcer that lost customer after meeting SLA).

Bottom Line: Meeting performance requirements will drive near term customer satisfaction and sales, but will not guarantee customer loyalty.

Excitement (Wow). Excitement attributes are unspoken and mostly unexpected by customers but can result in extremely high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Their absence doesn’t lead to overt dissatisfaction. Excitement attributes often satisfy latent needs – real needs of which customers are currently unaware. In an ultra-competitive marketplace where multiple vendors’ offerings provide similar levels of performance, delivering on excitement attributes that address “unknown needs” can provide a competitive advantage.

Bottom Line: Delivering on Excitement attributes drives customer satisfaction, new sales, and and customer loyalty. It enables the charging of a premium for goods and services.

One final thing to keep in mind is that this is a moving target. Today’s wow factors will soon become just basic requirements. Think about what was a “wow” factor on a mobile phone just a few years ago, and where things are today. Don’t sit still. Getting VOC is never a one-and-done.

Feel free to contact me directly to discuss how you might improve your efforts to capture voice of the customer (VOC).

We have many discussions with organizations where Lean, Six Sigma, and other performance improvement efforts have outright failed, or maybe have just started to lose their impact.  In an earlier article, we talked about the importance of alignment and how important it is to have clear line of sight to the performance gaps that matter the most.  But, in some cases, scorecards and dashboards are there, with well-defined KPIs pointing to high-value targets, yet improvement efforts still yield less than desired results. Why?

Of course there can be many reasons, but lack of discipline around project definition, or project charters, is something we see consistently in these problem situations.  Poorly defined projects are without a doubt a recipe for disaster.  You may be focusing on exactly the right problem, but, if the project’s problem statement and objectives are not well-defined, your chances of success in making an impact fall dramatically. So what are the key elements of a good project definition and charter?  Here are 5 big things I think should be present in all improvement project charters / project definitions:

1. A clear Problem Statement that defines the business problem in specific and quantifiable terms.  Done well, it will answer the following questions clearly and concisely:
   • What is the primary metric, or needle, that I’m trying to move?
   • What is the primary metrics current, or baseline, value?
   • How did I measure the primary metric’s baseline value, and over what period?
   • From the business’ perspective, what is the target value for the primary metric?
   • What is the gap between current performance and needed performance levels for the primary metric?
   • What is the value (in $’s if at all possible) of closing that gap?
   • What areas of risk do I need to pay attention to as I try to move the primary metric? These will become your secondary metrics. For example, if you’re trying to reduce costs in some customer facing area of the business, you need to pay attention to such things as attrition rates, customer satisfaction scores, etc.

 

2. A clear Objective Statement for the project.  It is unlikely that a single project can close the entire gap for the business problem defined in #1.  It is more likely (and usually preferable) that a project focuses on a sub-process, or segment of the overall value stream, and it targeting only a portion of the overall gap.

 

3. A clear understanding of the Start and Stop points for the project.  Related to #2, be very clear on exactly which segment of the value stream (subprocess) the project will be restricted to.  This is about scope, and avoiding the ever-present scope creep.  It may need to be adjusted as the project progresses (and/or evolves), but make an effort to define start and stop points up front.

 

4. A clear definition of the Team that needs to be involved in the project.  Team members may be actively working on the project analysis, or they may just be subject matter experts that are called upon to gather information and feedback.  They may work in the process/sub-process being analyzed, or they may be customers of or suppliers to that process.  Take time to think through who really needs to be involved, and engage them early.

 

5. Explanations of how things like are computed and derived.  For the gap values in problem and objective statements, how were those values derived?  There will always be questions of value, and it’s better to have explanations right in the project definition. The same goes for primary metric baseline values?  How were derived?  Show the data that was used, identify any assumptions that were made, identify any anomalies in the data, etc.

Project definition (project chartering), done well, takes time and effort, but I can assure you that your project outcomes will suffer if shortcuts are taken here.  I do realize that there is a lot of ground covered with these 5 elements, and that there is a lot of detail and nuance in each.  In an upcoming post, I plan to present an example and walk through each of the elements in some detail.

a short presentation on project identification and definition ….

Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss project chartering and project definition for your organization and its improvement efforts.

The last few years have witnessed big changes in the business climate, and continuous improvement (CI) efforts have certainly seen their share of change.   I talk with companies every day and, without a doubt, there has been a fundamental shift in thought on how to best make meaningful process improvement happen.

Prior to 2008, there was significant interest and buy-in for large-scale, top-down initiatives. There was a willingness to set aside large budgets and free up significant resources for the CI initiative.   Training increasingly large segments of the workforce was front and center.  Detailed, multi-year plans were put in place.   The CI initiative was heavily promoted, internally and externally, and employees were strongly urged to participate.

But, did those big initiatives deliver results?   Undoubtedly some did.  But, many more, when you really check the numbers, did not.  There are many distinct causes why they didn’t work, and I won’t try to dive into that here.    But, with the meltdown in the business climate, many leaders took a look in the rear view mirror and didn’t like what they saw …. big dollars and resources consumed with little evidence of concrete results.

Now, does this mean that CI and process improvement is useless and should be abandoned?  Of course not.  Businesses live and die today based on the strength and adaptiveness of their processes, as compared to their competitors.  Does it mean that the tools and methodologies used (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, etc) are not good and should be replaced with something new?   I think not.  The tools and methodologies can certainly be improved and expanded (and are), but they are proven to work.

So what’s happened?  I believe that, for a lot of companies, there was too much focus on the initiative and not nearly enough focus on results. And based on conversations I have with business leaders every day, I think many have drawn the same conclusion.

So, when smart people see the error in their ways, it typically leads to change.  The change that I’ve seen happen for CI is a move back to the basics, and a focus on bottomline, business results.  It may return, but for now I see very little interest in big change initiatives whose results are measured over the very long term, if ever truly measured.  I see a much more tactical view of CI, focusing on solving specific business problems quickly,  as opposed to general quality improvement.  CI programs are more likely to be looked at from a bottom-up or grass-roots perspective.

Smart leaders are now letting the specific needs of their business drive what the CI program looks like, what methodologies and tools are applied, how results get measured, what technology platforms are deployed, etc.  To borrow from Lean, the business is pulling CI capability, as opposed to it being pushed into the business.  In the real world, what does this mean?

a short executive brief that provides a good overview of the basics of lean

Well, I can only give you my perspective from talking with leaders at companies of all sizes and in many different domains, but what I see is a clear move back to the basics of business and process improvement.  Basic quality and process tools as employed in Business Process Management (BPM), Lean, and basic quality tools (Yellow Belt) are getting a second look.

Why?  Because, for many businesses, the basics will help solve 95% of the real business problems, get results fast, and they can be introduced into the organization for a very low cost and very low risk.  The basics also build a solid foundation on which advanced capabilities like Six Sigma and DFSS can be effectively built and deployed to deliver even more dramatic business results, with much less risk.

So, what do you think?  Is this just a reaction to circumstances and will large-scale, top down change initiatives return.   OR,   is this the new normal for companies when it comes to business and process improvement? Feel free to  Contact me if you’d like to discuss.

So, what does Business Process Management (BPM) mean to you if your organization has already gone headstrong into lean,  six sigma or other improvement efforts?    What does it mean to you if the efforts have really produced some good results?  Think you don’t need it and should move on?   You may want to think again ….

I constantly talk with people and hear some variation of ….

“We got a lot of great results from our program (Lean, Six Sigma, Quality, CI, etc) for the first couple years, everyone was excited and motivated, but now the program seems to be running out of steam.  Results and participation are falling, interest in waning, and we can’t figure out why”.

There are, of course, many potential causes for this, but one of them seems to be pretty consistent.  There is no real project pipeline and project prioritization approach. What happens?  People don’t really know what to work on so they don’t do anything or, maybe worse, they start working on squeaky wheel projects that have little or no impact on the business, and may even have a negative impact.  If this happens, I can assure you that it is a recipe for disaster for any business improvement program.

Download our whitepaper that discusses using BPM and scorecards to align improvement efforts

If you build that BPM framework, you will have a clear view of what really matters to the business and metrics to gauge your success in improving those things.  A pipeline of business cases and projects can be built based on measurable performance gaps and those projects will, by definition, have clear line of sight to things that really matter.  A clear prioritization scheme then keeps things practical and real.

If you have a clear list of projects that are absolutely aligned with the things that matter most to the business and you have a way to prioritize improvement efforts, do you think an improvement program is likely to fizzle?   I think not.

So, give BPM a second look, even if you’re well into an improvement program.  It doesn’t have to be a complicated, drawn out task.  If you’re just getting started, you can and should build it in stages, while you’re picking up some of those low hanging fruit projects.   If you have a mature effort, you can still build it in manageable stages by prioritizing the different areas of the business.  In the medium to long run, it might be the difference between your improvement program being a flavor of the month initiative and a long-term, strategic value-add component of the way you do business.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss BPM and your organization in more detail.

I talk to people everyday in all kinds of industries who, for whatever reason, have decided that they need to do Lean.   As often as not, they quickly jump to something that  I think is just not THE critical success factor for Lean success – TOOLS.

Now, before I get “purists” thinking I’m completely nuts, I’m not saying that tools aren’t important. Tool knowledge is obviously necessary, but it is not sufficient. Let me explain my thinking.

First, what is success, or maybe better, what is not success?  Success IS NOT training 100 people across 5 operations in Lean. Success IS NOT about skills certifications. Success IS NOT completing 20 projects last quarter, all with slick final report outs.

our Lean Overview and Primer ….

In this new business world we live in (and, realistically, in the old as well) success can only be defined by RESULTS, results that can be measured. Am I improving service to the customer? Am I pulling cost out and improving margins? Am I doing a better job of retaining revenue streams? Am I doing a better job generating top-line growth? Anything else is just academic, and I can’t think of a single business today that is interested in academic exercises.

To get RESULTS and to get them consistently and over the long term, there is much, much more involved. I think it can be boiled down to a simple and probably over-simplistic analogy though: Acquire your target, aim the weapon, then fire. And do it consistently.  All to often the acquire and aim components are put on the back burner in favor of fire events like tools training and kaizen events.

There has to be a business system in place to make sure that all three of the elements happen. Why? What happens if the acquire and aim components are ignored? You’ll get squeaky wheel projects being worked on that, while they are interesting and do improve stuff, really don’t make any measurable impact to the business. Training for the sake of training and projects for the sake of projects …. a recipe for a Lean train wreck.

Acquiring targets is about aligning the lean effort with the REAL NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS. Aiming is about defining and scoping projects so that they are manageable and that results are predictable. Combine these with good training and Lean project execution and success in terms of meaningful results is within reach. Ignore them and, well, you’ll have a lot of people trained and executing projects ….. but you’re unlikely to see any real improvement in your business …..

Thoughts?  I’d like to hear from you …..