OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND CONTROL - EXECUTION
Defining Operational Goals
“It is a promise of quality and a license to charge more for your product - very often it is the most important asset of a company.” Simon Anholt • Our JIT isn’t working. What happened?
• Why can’t the customer understand?
• Each part of the organization is on its own!
This session is focused on more effective operations from an organizational alignment perspective*. This session delves into the firm’s methods of defining and planning its customer fulfillment and delivery. All businesses are based on providing the customer a product/service at the right price with acceptable qualities delivered as desired. Operation’s provides two of the three parts of any deal – Price and Quality. Organizations have come to realize the power and value of using a program
management methodology and are using it not only for critical and proprietary pursuits but increasingly with success on daily tasks. This approach starts from the initial communications to design in production and through the entire product lifecycle. The session is to establish means and methods for your organization to define productivity and team performance through responsibilities communications and feedback systems in a defined framework that allows reference assessment and measurements of performance.
Benefits
• Develop plans and activities to perfect and synchronize the activities and communications • Systematic and measurable operational processes with means of objective evaluations
• A well balanced, thoughtful team that now has ease of communication and purposeful guidance
Takeaways
• An integrated systems thinking approach to current operations and future changes; • Review of succession and development policies and plans;
• Simple tools to identify the performance tied to the team and leader. Prerequisite
• None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Planning & Scheduling for Business Operations
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hoffer • Are your operations like a well orchestrated symphony?
• Is your Work in Process (WIP) and/or rejects growing?
• Are you meeting your business obligations as well as your profit?
This session is focused on applying the best practices in operations that include the organization’s unique position, proposition and resources. Planning and scheduling are the heart all organizations. Every organization that delivers something, a product or a service, has production requirements and must have the capability to succeed.
Attention is applied to the clarity of communication and focus that has made difficult routine and project work come into being. Methods to link incentives and measuring results are discussed. Operations are addressed as the integrated functions that create and deliver to the customer’s requirements. Open discussions on unique tools derived from quality science and real life experience are utilized in exercises.
Benefits
• Introduction to proven methods and knowledge to optimize operations
• Means to evaluate the balance and effectiveness of the integration of functions
• Means and methods that emphasize the team as an integration of individual talents and efforts
Takeaways
• Knowledge of how small inefficiencies undermine the operational processes • Means of instilling an improvement methodology, cycle and metrics
• Methods to use objective data and tools to guide coordinated effort
Prerequisite
• None
Session Duration
• ½ day • 4 hours
Critical Decision Making:
Deciding How to Decide
“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
Theodore Roosevelt • Who decided to go with New Coke?
• It got out of hand before I could do anything!
• It wasn’t my choice!
The ability to make critical decisions is totally dependent upon accurately defining a risk or problem, framing risks related to the solutions, handling personal bias, and adherence to governance and process. We have all either made or seen the results when a critical decision is made using the “shotgun” or “ready-fire-aim” approaches. People die and business go under due to poor decision making. Poor decisions are based on personal and professional basis people just believing
something will never happen to them and a number of other factors that are explored in the session. Well defined critical decision governance and process prevents secondary problems from arising resulting in a higher probability of successful outcomes.
Benefits
• The result of your collective decisions helps assure better communication.
• Decisions and results more consistently regarded as well thought out and chosen.
• Identification of hidden problems, not visible ones, to enhance effective critical decision making Takeaways
• A new way of looking at your organization with a confidence to take on problems. • Clear messages and implied approval to fix issues within the organizational guidelines. • Understanding Risks vs. Problems and how to deal with them
Prerequisite • None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Manufacturing and Business Operations:
Applying Kaizen and Lean to Really Do More with Less
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin • Has your manufacturing scrap become a profit center?
• If airplanes operated like your operations and projects would you board your next flight?
• If you mentioned Lean would people think your meetings would no longer have donuts?
• If any critical resource left your company tomorrow would you be prepared?
The Manufacturing and Business Operations workshop is not just for manufacturing companies. The fundamental principles of manufacturing apply to service companies as well. If you desire to improve the overall performance of your company’s total operations this is the only workshop that will provide you with unique tools and approaches to increase your profit.
Kaizen, Lean, 5S and other principles are often misused or over simplified reducing the total positive integrated effect these may bring to the entire
company. Are you ready for the next wave of catastrophes (Black Swan event)? If you don’t know or have not fully applied these principles you are missing out on strategic and tactical advantages or limiting your chances of surviving the next Wall Street or global event. Obtain wisdom on how we have adapted these and other fundamental principles in diverse industries with great success.
Benefits
• Awareness of objective means to identify waste and confusion • A systematic means of approaching and engaging teams toward CPI • Reinforcement of leadership communication and strategy
Takeaways
• An integrated systems thinking approach - not just outside the box; there is no box!
• Walk away with an integrated systems thinking approach - not just outside the box; there is no box! • Simple tools to identify the root cause of problems instead of the ready, fire, aim approach
• Identify waste to reduce rework, improve quality and increase productivity Prerequisite
• None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Teaming Workshop: Bring Buyer & Seller Together
“Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered.” Niccolò Machiavelli
• Adversarial relationships produce results!
• Team with my suppliers – I think not, since they always try to make unnecessary changes!
• I negotiate from my strengths, and I do a lot of negotiations!
This session extends the teaming premise to its inescapable conclusion; allying with all who can and will bring you success. Means and methods of internally identifying “buyer and seller” to establish the culture of teaming is of primary importance for all parties. You will be introduced to methods of broadening the definition and impact of buyer and seller beyond the immediate (1st order) deliveries.
Negotiation and communication practices are necessary to ally and commit the “other” side. Buyer and Seller teams require establishing the criteria rules and processes to allow the most objective view and analysis of balanced risks and reward. Recognition and means to keep the cost of procurement within the established bounds while continuing to develop both buyer’s and seller’s capability to be the best for each other. Benefits
• Means to further develop a team culture
• Increased communication and dedication on both sides • Negotiation concepts that converge on resolution Takeaways
• Understanding of Cost of Procurement • Additional Team forming methods
• Comprehensive understanding of the best practices in procurement Prerequisite
• none
Session Duration • ¼ day • 2 hours
Building Indispensable Teams:
The Self Directed Workforce
“Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” Vince Lombardi • Our teams work just fine the way they are right now!
• Are you running out of people to blame?
• Does everything stop when things go bad?
This session addresses critical elements of high value teams and leadership from the perspective of ownership, accountability, responsibility and trust. The use of processes within and by the team, as well as incentives for superior performance and long range measurable goals are some of the welding tools. The team’s ability to see above and through the fog and muck within
organizations generates a shift in culture throughout the entire organization. One of the many keys to high value teams is an inspirational leader and team members who have no boundaries and easily communicate and connect all elements of the company to get things done through a Self Directed Workforce.
Benefits
• Developing of teams that want to work together
• Learn to define and allocate responsibility with appropriate tools and rules • Recognition and use of tools for objective measurement
Takeaways
• Understanding signs of ineffective teams
• Methods to enhance team synergy and total team ownership • Tools to commit team members to enterprise results
Prerequisite • None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Checks, Balances and Feedback:
Designing Internal Systems
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Peter Drucker • Deliverables or commitments falling through the cracks?
• I thought the smoke alarm was supposed to go off when we have problems like this?
• Can you trace back problems or errors to the real root cause?
Checks and balances need to change as the organization grows. What was easy and direct slowly becomes convoluted and bureaucratic. Setting up checks and balances, and even feedback systems are for the most part a routine effort. Growth and change in processes, personnel, suppliers, and/or material can change internal and external requirements that will require significant changes in order to be able to respond with the desired level of intelligence.
The usual response is to add something to the current process. Each time more is added in small invisible chunks resulting in clogs to the system no different than pipes clogging in a home. Checks and balances are
opportunities to reduce bureaucracy needless controls and meaningless approvals to validate the goal that this session will explore.
Benefits
• Identify internal systems and the criteria to rate them
• Increased understanding and communication across the organization • Consistent and measurable means of improving effectiveness
Takeaways
• Understanding and tools that produce balanced and effective internal systems • How to keep checks and balances effective
• Evaluation criteria to free the workforce to ‘do the right thing’ Prerequisites
• None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Controlling the Priceless Corporate Asset:
Time
“Time is the scarcest resource of the manager. If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.”
Peter Drucker • Why don’t people have enough time for all our meetings?
• I can’t understand why our people just can’t learn how to multi-task like me!
• Four more projects? We don’t have enough people and time to do the 50 we have now!
This session opens up attendees to a unique approach to allow everyone in a business to control their time and be more productive. Getting organized, prioritizing your work, and managing your time are skills that may benefit anyone at work and at home to prevent the 90% second half. These skills are normally acquired as we find out what works for us and what doesn’t at the expense of tough challenges or failures.
Prioritizing your work is normally a to do list disaster that allows others to prioritize what you do. Learn time tested approaches and tips to enhance your organizational skills, free up time in your day, accomplish more, and do it on time. Visibility of human resource capacity planning on an individual basis is critical for the entire organization to take advantage of opportunities to bypass the competition. Balancing time is explored for the current year and to forecast resources for better preparation and reaction to normal fires and the real life “black swan” events that consume the resource that performs the work the people.
Benefits
• Tools and methods that optimize time usage
• A consistent and comprehensive method of time awareness • Recognition of time wasters and time abusers
Takeaways
• Understanding how others may view time
• Means to satisfy communication while controlling your time
• Means which allow crises to interrupt and proceed to resolution with minimal interference Prerequisite
• None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Operating Metrics Development and Analysis
“Knowledge is meaningful only if it is reflected in action. The human race has found out the hard way that we are what we do, not just what we think.” Robert Fulghum • How could I know that things weren’t going well?
• You can’t tell what is going on from numbers!
• I always know what is going on. I have 50 metrics for one single operations output!
This session is an applied study of an organization’s reporting areas whose function is to deliver what the customers want, in the manner they desire with the customer’s desired quality as profitably as possible and to measure the output in comparison to what was agreed in the plan. Operations are the center of most businesses ability to deliver the right product for a profit.
Development of the right data for the right reason from the right sources at the
right levels with the right collection techniques to validate quality and continuous process improvement are only the beginning. Data is only a reflection of the quantification of parts of the operation. Analysis is the means by which the data become information. Information is the basis that analysis uses to derive metrics. Metrics are the measurements that provide
management information upon which to make critical decisions. Since profitability is the ultimate goal the cost of quality is the validation of the system.
Benefits
• Development of indicators at earliest economic decision point • Increased focus on balanced, informed operations
• Escalation channels to allow sensible and appropriate decisions to be made Takeaways
• A more balanced and predictive model of the organization and operations alignment • New means to establish measurements that “pay-off”
• A clear separation of data, information and metrics Prerequisite
• None
Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Capital & Human Resource Planning
"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Dwight D, Eisenhower • Emergency procurements have helped us out of lots of tight spots!
• We need Bob on all these projects
• We carry spares of everything
Capacity planning is the process to determine the capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products/projects, operational work and continuous lifecycle maintenance. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time.
A discrepancy between the capacity of an organization and the demands of its customer’s results in:
• Inefficiency • Waste
• Reduced quality and rework • Inability to meet demand
This session explores the means to define effective capacity planning with proven examples to minimize or eliminates these discrepancies without jumping the gun to hire more people only to find out later this was not the real root cause. Also explored is the process by which the immediate and long term destiny of the organization is forecasted and logically planned. It is through both Capital and Human activity that businesses expand and sustain themselves along with the ability to maximize the other.
Benefits
• A more clear and less risky path toward expansion
• Several means to evaluate possible futures that minimize risk while maximizing return • A strategic look at how to integrate the organization into convergence on the end game Takeaways
• Means and methods to determine balance and growth in productivity
• Balance understanding of how long term planning must keep integrating with current needs • A more realistic planning viewpoint and recognition of vulnerabilities
Prerequisite (If Required) • None
Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
Define a Cost Effective Procurement System:
Buy Smart, not Cheap
“To contribute usefully to the advance of science, one must sometimes not disdain from undertaking simple verifications.” Léon Foucault • Why are we getting all these RUSH purchases every day?
• Does your ‘cost of procurement’ make sense?
• Why don’t we know what our procurement system is costing us?
This session explores the need for the human and systems approach to procurement systems.
Procurement systems are the means to validate customers are ordering and receiving the products and services delivered by the business.
The procurement system is a cost center that must validate itself from a cost-benefit analysis perspective, and can be controlled through attention to Cost of Procurement. Procurement system processes are explored from the basis of a company wide communications system not just for the buyers and sellers.
Electronic systems set up without the end in mind usually results in the tool running the business instead of the other way around.
Benefits
• Developing objective tools and analysis to evaluate internal systems
• Learning the hidden costs of administrative requirements that are redundant • Controlled “cost of procurement”
Takeaways
• Comprehensive understanding of the procurement cycle • Understanding “closed loop” systems
• Tools to measure procurement results Prerequisite
• None Session Duration • ½ day • 4 hours
