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Home » Consultancy » Manufacturing Operations Consultancy » Lean Manufacturing » Process Improvement » Four Step Structure
The four step structure is the backbone of each successful Process Improvement programme.
Each step is led by one of our staff and involves a cross-functional selection of your own employees throughout the process. This team approach enables your organisation to benefit from both the measurable performance improvement and from the fact that the team members have developed vital and transferable improvement techniques.
The first step is to define exactly what you want to achieve. All improvement programmes are designed to contribute to, or fit within, your organisation’s overall strategy and objectives.
This ensures that the activity undertaken contributes positively to your organisation’s performance and has improved sustainability.
The strategy check is carried out with a small team of senior managers.
The second step is to conduct a thorough diagnostic to identify the specific areas that require improvement; i.e. the gaps between current performance and strategic objective. The appropriate tools and techniques to close the gap are selected.
The diagnostic team, typically 5 to 10 strong, is cross functional and includes employees from the specific work area being evaluated. This team then undertake the next step.
The third step is the actual deployment of the selected tools and techniques using the “learn by doing” approach.
The team learns about each tool in a short teach point session, supported by a simple interactive example. The team then deploy the tool they have just learned about, at the point where the process takes place.
The practical deployment of each tool contributes to the performance improvement and ensures that the team members will understand and remember the learning.
The fourth step has two main purposes:
The workshop team are very much involved in the spread of activities throughout the rest of your organisation, passing on their learning and experience to other employees.
At this point you can also decide to strengthen your improvement plans by incorporating other specialised programmes such as:
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