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Welcome to Issue 3 of our e-zine, Better Today.

No matter what sector you're working in, it's essential to
continuously assess the way you do things, to ensure you're getting
the best return possible, particularly in the current downturn. 
It's our aim to bring you interesting, helpful information to help
you spot where you could do better, and how to do it better.
 

 
Business Surgery - Ask the Experts
South Durham Business Network are hosting a Business Surgery in
Spennymoor providing an opportunity for businesses to explore any
issues, concerns and ideas with professionals from a range of
professional services.  Nicholson Consultancy are participating and
we will be happy to see you there if you'd like the opportunity to
have an informal chat about the benefits you and your company can
achieve by implementing various improvement activities.  The
surgery takes place on Tuesday, 28 April.  To find out more
information with the full range of "experts" and the timetable,
visit our Business Surgery webpage,
http://www.nicholsonconsultancy.com/noticeboard_Business_Surgery.htm
 

Receiving Feedback

To be really effective at feedback you need to be able not only to
give effective feedback, but also to receive it.  It is important
to seek out feedback (even asking for feedback on your feedback). 
This will help you to learn and progress and ultimately lead to an
improvement in performance.

When receiving feedback remember:

   1. To listen actively
   2. Suspend judgement and let them finish
   3. Repeat back the main points (this will show you have
understood what has been said)
   4. Ask for specifics
   5. If necessary gather further information from other people
   6. Decide what you want to do next

Remember that if you ask for feedback, then you need to accept what
you hear and don't begin to defend yourself.  You need to
understand that this is their observation.  You don't have to
believe it, or act upon it, but you must listen to them openly.  If
you begin to defend your actions, others may stop telling you the
truth.
 

In summary, I've noted below our Top 10 Feedback Tips:

   1. Consider the business reasons for giving feedback
   2. Make it timely
   3. Praise in public, criticise in private
   4. Keep it simple
   5. Put it in context
   6. Focus on behaviour / results, not personality
   7. Use objective information, not just your ownopinion
   8. Focus on the future
   9. Listen to the other person's point of view
  10. Don't overdo it!
 
North East Regional Business Fair - "Improving Business
Efficiency" seminar

Following our presentation at the North East Regional Business
Fair, we were asked for copies of the slides.  In response we have
provided below some notes to accompany the slides and give some
further thoughts on how you can improve the efficiency of your
business.
 
For your business to be successful you need 3 things:
 
Happy customers, who will repeatedly give you business
Profit	- in order to survive a business needs to make a profit!!
Happy employees, who are motivated, want to get involved in the business and
make improvements

Lean is an improvement methodology, which if done correctly will
help you achieve these three things.  We abbreviate them to "Cus",
"Bus", "Us".  It's an easy way for everyone in the business to
remember that any improvements need to either / or create happy
customers, happy employees and return a profit.
 
But what is Lean Thinking?

Lean Thinking is about:

   1. Understanding exactly what your customers' needs are - the
only way to truly do this is to talk to them.

   2. Design your process(es) to deliver these needs - once you
fully understand your customers' requirements you need to design
the process(es) in your business to meet them.

   3. Eliminate any activities that do not add value - Value added
activities change the form,fit or function of a product or service.
They are the activities the customer is willing to pay for. 
Examples include entering orders, ordering raw materials, shipping
goods to customers, preparing drawings, assembling, processing
customer payments. Non-value added activities are those activities
that take time and resources but do not add value to the product or
service.  They are the things the customer would be unwilling to
pay for. Non-Value added activities need to be eliminated, reduced
or simplified.  Typically, non-value added activities account for
95% of total lead time. Examples include inspection, testing,
filing information, obtaining multiple approvals, counting parts,
reviewing / checking.

   4. Standardise- "one best way" - Once you have designed your
process(es) and eliminated wasteful activities you need to make
sure they become standard throughout the business.  This can be
done using work instructions, standard operating procedures and
quality manuals (ISO standards).

   5. Sustaining and continuously improve - this is the hardest
section of all, and is where most businesses fail.


Basically Lean is all about adding value and eliminating waste.  It
is not just about cutting costs, but about increasing value for
money.

Lean, as with Six Sigma and other improvement models, is inspired
by the Deming Improvement Cycle.  First you select the problem /
process you want to address, plan out a solution and implement it. 
Once you have finished stand back and review/ evaluate the results.
 Then finally decide on the changes needed to improve the process. 
This is a continuous cycle; once you act you need to start again
and plan how you are going to implement the changes etc.

Previous improvement methodologies, such as Work Study, looked at
the time it took a person to do an activity, and by concentrating
on the value added part (e.g.actually doing work the customer was
prepared to pay for - added-value activities) they found ways to
make them quicker.  Lean looks at the activities which do not add
value (e.g. the activities the customer is not prepared to pay for
- non-value added activities) and tries to find ways to eliminate
them.

There are seven visible wastes which we've covered in Issue 1 of
"Better Today".  To recap they are:

    * Defects
    * Inventory
    * Over-production
    * Transport
    * Motion
    * Waiting
    * Over-processing


On top of the seven visible wastes there are three hidden wastes:
 

   1. Unfulfilled customer needs - is there anything else you could
be doing for your customer which they would be willing to pay for?

   2. Time - the more inefficient a business becomes, the less time
they have.  By beginning to make improvements and becoming more
efficient the business can create time to spend on improvement
activities.

   3. Unfulfilled human potential - Employees are your best source
of competitive advantage, and the ones who are most likely to know
the problem areas, and how to improve them.

What we are trying to achieve with Lean is massive improvements in
productivity.  This can be done by either doing the same with less
resources, or doing much more with the same resources, and it's the
latter which most companies aim for.

 
What do you think?
We're always keen to receive feedback about our e-zine.  Is there
anything in particular you'd like to read about?  How can we
improve this service?  Please send any feedback to Carol Hogg
atch@nicholsonconsultancy.com.