A Good Starting Point For Understanding Operational Process Improvement

Everything that everyone in your ready mix or construction aggregates business does is part of a process. So if you want to improve your product, organizational performance and profits, while increasing value to your customers, you have to focus on improving the process.

By placing your emphasis on process improvement you can avoid the typical trap that many business leaders seem to fall prey to.  Payroll is a big number, looking to cut costs I will focus on trimming payroll, forcing people to do more with less.  That is not necessarily process improvement.  This view of being “lean” is that less people results in maximized operational efficiencies and margins. The reduced staff approach often produces a brief bump in performance and margins. However, in the long run organizations can end up with increased costs, reduced value to customers and a poorer competitive position in the market due to overworked people and processes. Organizations that commit to process improvement do so with substantially reduced risk of destroying value when compared to short term approaches.

Systems Form The Links

Systems are links in the chain connecting  consistent and repeatable  performance.  Systems help you have predictable outcomes and reduced variability.  Variations are the opposite of “quality”, and by reducing the “variables” (improving quality), we can begin to continuously improve the process.  It may be that reducing staff is, or is not an outcome of process improvement. Either way your systems become more efficient and your people can accomplish more with less stress and variability.  That is a healthy improvement.

How Do I Start?

By observing reality very closely.  Not what you want your staff to do.  Not what they say they do.  Not what you hear that they do.  Observe what they really do.  Document every step.  That is your starting point.