Blog Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Partners in Business Excellence, LLC

Get New Employees Up to Speed Fast with Business Process Improvement

September 7, 2017 By Peter Holtgreive No Comments

In my years as a Business Process Improvement Coach, I have been called in to work with companies who have a new work force. In one particular case, a company acquired another, complete with an unskilled labor force, and needed to train them all quickly. The need for staff training can be created from mergers, acquisitions, seasonal or temporary employment, or a jump in production demands requiring increased staffing. It can also happen when employees are transferred to a new department, or with any big shift in management or restructuring. What if management took a proactive approach to change?

The need for business process improvement is always noticed at times of transition. Fresh perspectives can offer feedback and this feedback should lead to improvements. Whenever new job positions are created, or new employees require training, business process improvement can get everyone on the same page and be more effective than ever before.

Business Process Improvement and Human Capital Management

Human Resources is a highly documented, regulated, and important responsibility. With payroll being the highest expense in most businesses, efficiency and productivity in the area of Human Capital Management can make a huge impact on the bottom line. Overall, employers are seeking business process improvement in the areas of:

Increasing Employment Engagements. There are many distractions that can vie for an employee’s time. How do we decrease these distractions in a way that maintains high morale and improves engagement?

Increased Workflow Productivity. What systems, technology and processes can be put in place, automated, and tightened up? What training is needed to increase productivity?

Reducing Employee Turnover. Some turnover will always be expected, as people, places and circumstances change. However, high levels of turnover, or even turnover above the expected attrition, lead to hidden expenses and loss in productivity. What is frustrating and unaddressed in our workforce? Where can we be proactive, rather than reactive in relationship to staff management?

Reducing Onboarding Time. When we do have employee turnover, how can we shorten the time it takes to recruit, hire, train and get employees to the level of production we require?

How a Business Process Improvement Professional Helps

Business Process Improvement Professionals, such as myself, have an objective, trained eye to see what’s working and what’s missing. Through several assessment tools, we are able to pinpoint redundancies, holes, strengths, weaknesses and more. We can create job descriptions, job instructions, build processes, and improve current workflows to maximize effectiveness and engagement. By creating consistent business processes that take into consideration what the assessments are telling us, we can get everyone on the same page, and quickly up to speed in becoming a successful, productive, and happy member of your work force.

Contact me today to learn more about how I help businesses simplify their human capital management through business process improvement strategies. Cleaner processes create faster results, better productivity and employee satisfaction. Together, we will create a continuous improvement culture and healthier bottom line.

Blog

Dealing with a Frankenstein Business Process? What It Is and How to Fix It

April 25, 2017 By Peter Holtgreive No Comments

I have the privilege of working with forward thinking businesses. These businesses know something isn’t quite right, but they can’t always put their finger on it. I’m called in and using a variety of techniques, discover and correct workflow holes and implement process improvement.

Birth of a Process

The first time that a series of steps are performed to complete a task, a process has been born. I use the word “born”, instead of developed, as rarely are processes designed. A business process exists because someone saw the need for something to get done. All of our daily activities are conducted through processes, some are good and some are poor. We recognize the poor processes typically through things that frustrate us. For example, standing in line for hours waiting for a representative to take five minutes of their time to explain the many pages of forms required to fill out. Poor processes can be the state they are in due to something I call a Frankenstein Business Process.

Typical Development of a Business Process

Most processes change many times. They may change in response to changes in technology, changes in products or services and/or changes in customer requirements. Most often, however, a business process changes for various other reasons, not always in a way best for a business.

One of my responsibilities when working with a business is to ask why they do things the way they do. The typical response is that no one knows why and that it is how they have always done it. One business I was called into found themselves in a state of panic and urgency because the company they relied on for their envelopes had gone out of business. It was an important part of their workflow and they weren’t sure how to manage the change.

It turned out that the specialty envelopes were ordered once because the standard ones were not available, and they continued to order believing there was a requirement for them when there really wasn’t. On the surface, this may seem to be a small issue, but it really created a great deal of problems as a new vendor couldn’t be identified and it was effecting their production to not have this particular and critical supply.

In this case it was envelopes, but in another scenario, it could be a change in adhesive, for example, that effects the final product output. This, in turn could also affect price, skills needed, equipment changes and more.

The Frankenstein Process

Over time, business processes will naturally change. We hire new employees with a mix of education and experiences who change the processes to try to make them better, or in response to poor performance of the business. These changes become a “Frankenstein” process, that is, steps have been added or removed without really looking at how the process works overall. Processes like these are ingrained with wasteful, frustrating and unproductive steps that end up costing a business money, or worse yet, employees or customers.

I believe it doesn’t matter how great your product or service is, your business is only as good as its processes.

Innovation’s Opposite

The biggest curse to innovation is that of “We’ve always done it that way”. When we really look at the need, regardless of how things were done before and independent of the fixes that were put into place, we can discover waste and inefficiencies and replace them with new, improved processes that are long-lasting, rather than quick, Frankenstein fixes that eventually fail.

Contact me today to learn more about how I help businesses to simplify and improve their business process making them easier to understand, perform and manage. Together, we will create a continuous improvement culture and healthier bottom line.

Blog

What is Value Stream Mapping?

March 17, 2017 By Peter Holtgreive No Comments

Businesses who have an end product, such as in manufacturing, use Value Stream mapping to help streamline activities, find holes or bottlenecks in their processes, or gain more clarity about how information and materials move through their organization. Value Stream Mapping is one tool of Lean Manufacturing.

Both Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Value Stream Improvement (VSI) are sometimes used interchangeably, but the subtle difference is that VSM focuses on manufacturing and VSI is used more for the entire organization, including in non-manufacturing areas such as front office processes. It can be used in a variety of industries and I have used it successfully with a library, a software company, a county workforce agency, a construction company and others.

More and more businesses are looking at this Value Stream Improvement model, regardless of industry, to accomplish their goals.

“…Lean is much more than manufacturing. Peter Holtgreive led our software company into Lean with impressive results through value stream mapping and several kaizen events for our services and finance teams.” -Scott Ford

What is Value Stream mapping?

Value Stream mapping is a visual tool that defines information and material flows within a business. It clarifies responsibilities, practices and workflow with the overall goal of increased efficiency. Efficiency can come in several forms, such as reduced costs of production, increased productivity and less waste, just to name a few.

Value Stream Mapping can be used for processes of all types including employee onboarding, role and/or workflow clarity, accounts payable or receivable, warehouse functions, purchasing/working with vendors and more. It can be used to maximize consistency in every department of an organization and can be accomplished online, offline or a blend of both.

As a tool for efficiency and effectiveness, it can be used to create an ideal scenario versus actual scenario, to help make changes in management, processes and even culture. VSM looks at how well all of the processes work together, focused on material/service flow and information flow. There are typically many metrics included in each process step and in a lot of cases it goes through many departments, usually starting at initial client contract through to invoicing.

Value Stream mapping takes a specific objective and helps to measure and compare that objective alongside the entire organization’s objectives to make sure that all processes are aligned with the company’s values and capabilities.

How do I begin Value Stream mapping?

Value Stream Mapping usually begins with a designated team of people from inside the organization tasked with leading the project. It is also recommended that “outside eyes”, a consultant or Value Stream facilitator, be present to help guide the conversation and point out holes that may be overlooked by people who are seeing things day to day.

Here’s a specific example of this: I went into a company to facilitate a Value Stream Mapping session on how they receive sales orders for their custom made products. Once we mapped the current state it became obvious how poorly the entire process was working causing frustration throughout the company. As outside eyes, I was able to point out and address both a waste and a broken process they wouldn’t have addressed without me.

In Value Stream mapping we:

Plan the event by defining the scope and collecting data.
Extract the knowledge of those who do the work, create a snapshot and visibly show how the process works or doesn’t work – the Current State.
Identify opportunities for improvement throughout the value stream where the processes can work better together.
Design the Future State map ensuring that the opportunities improvements are taken into account while maintaining alignment with the mission and vision of the company. Create a project plan on how to get from the Current State to the Future State.

After the Value Stream Mapping is complete, we track, measure and manage follow through to make sure the new process is working as intended. We adjust or correct as needed.

Value Stream mapping is an effective tool for bringing clarity and efficiency to processes in business. As your outside eyes, I help you by facilitating Value Stream mapping and other efficiency boosting, non-software based solutions that can be implemented quickly and easily to reach the goals you are desiring. I often use VSM to find out what the rest of my engagement with a client might be, as it really helps us develop a plan on how to get where they want to and what needs to be done to get there.

Contact me today to learn more about how Value Stream mapping can simplify and improve your business process making them easier to understand, perform and manage. Together, we will create a continuous improvement culture and healthier bottom line.