Productivity: A lost science
October 23, 2012 Leave a comment
There has been lots of press coverage and professional journal coverage of operational excellence, cost structure, organization, logistics and supply chain management over the last 5-7 years. What has been lost in the shuffle is how to evaluate, measure and improve productivity. Few organizations have the capacity to perform productivity analysis beyond the calculating production or service levels over consecutive time periods.
Alas, productivity is how organizations excel and how they are able to offer lower prices, better quality, and higher profitability. So what are the key activities to increase the capacity of organizations to bring productivity into the forefront of their operational an
d business reviews?
- Benchmark others. In my dissertation completed ten years, there was a 100% connection between benchmarking and organizational improvement.
- Develop a precise measure of productivity for the organization, and define each term used in common practice
- Construct simple tools and simulations to perform basic cause and effect analysis using standard input such as labor, material, equipment, systems, and environment.
- Add the measure and the ultimate evaluation of performance to the top management agenda and KPIs
Then you will be able to truly compare how your organization fares in the market, and the factors that stand in the way for higher operational performance.
DMAIC and Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives
May 10, 2012 by G. Harris Leave a comment
Authors of the article have pointed out that: “More organizations have become actively engaged in social initiatives, and many are proud to promote their activities and accomplishments in annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports”.
In all of these, usually called, “sustainability reports” companies present their achievements on a corporate level measured by company-wide KPIs. In these reports, CSR is presented in multiple categories such as: Environmental Management, GHG Emissions, Energy Consumption, Water Consumption, Recycling, Social Impact and Diversity. The biggest issue in implementing CSR initiatives in organizations is how to deploy the strategic CSR goals on the operational level.
In the case of implementing Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, a wider continuous improvement framework is necessary to make these changes sustainable.
“A big ship traveling at full speed requires distance and time to turn around”. (Deming)
Calyptus Consulting has helped multiple clients in several industries (Mining, Manufacturing, Financial Services) in aligning their strategic goals and implementing a sustainable continuous improvement framework using its Policy Deployment procedure. Using this procedure we have been able to analyze and develop/redesign clients’ KPIs (Including CSR) and help them deploy their strategic objectives to the operational level. KPIs have been deployed horizontally and vertically encompassing multiple organizational tiers (depending on a client size and structure) and a reporting system has been implemented to roll up the KPIs from the operational level to the system wide KPIs.
The main goal of this approach is to align company objectives from the bottom all the way to the company vision and mission and empower the organization with sustainable system able to self-direct its initiatives across the organization to fulfill strategic objectives and stay “on the right course” as the title of the article implies.
Filed under Commentary Tagged with Continuous Improvement, CSR, Diversity, DMAIC, Energy Consumption, Environmental Management, GHG Emissions, Hoshin Kanri, Integration, KPI, Policy Deployment, quality, Recycling, six sigma, Social Impact, Water Consumption