Business Productivity Consulting (BPC) didn’t invent all the tools, methods or approaches that we use. We stand on the foundations and learning’s of hundred’s of other people. These people have learned by study and application how to make things work better. They then shared these learning’s through classes, books and consulting in real business situations. BPC has learned to get great results by combining parts of these different tools, methods and approaches together to match the need. So get the synergy of the best process improvement learning’s of the last 100 years for your company.

Click here if you want to read how BPC learned to make a synergy from the many methods.

Many people will make a process chart or flow chart of a process. Six Sigma teaches this as on of it’s tools. Lean also makes a flow chart, but it expands on the concept by also showing where the queues exist. Lean also shows how the company controls the process through MRP’s or other systems. Queues are the places where work stops and waits before the next process step. Lean has you measure both the process time and the queue wait times to better understand how the process is really working. It then has you sum all the process time and all the queue time and do a ratio. This is a major addition to process improvement. It makes many invisible aspects of the system visible. We have come to believe that if you don’t know where the queues are and how they work, you really don’t know how to make the process work better.

This is one of the principles of process improvement that we found. You must make things that are normally invisible to the workers and managers visible so that it can be worked on. It is always amazing to us how many things are hidden by systems. When you make them visible people are often surprised by the results of the measurement. People often quickly buy into making an improvement after seeing the numbers.

Speaking in the language of management: