Focusing improvements to have a real impact on company performance

Often improvement projects using good Lean and Six Sigma Techniques improve the local performance but many times these local improvements do not translate into bottom line improvements for the company. Many times the huge cost savings made in one department just do not seem to appear on the company balance sheet.

How can improvements be focused to guarantee a real impact on company performance?

Using Buffer Management’s three colour system to record what orders have been waiting for when they hit the red zone and analysing this data will identify common blockages to the flow. This will quickly enable improvement projects to be launched which will contribute greatest to the overall company performance.

The improvement projects will further reveal hidden capacity to increase Throughput or give operations the ability to safely reduce lead times internally even further. To increase the rates of improvement record the reasons for entry into the Yellow zone as well as the red. This will further increase the flow. Watch out for excuses by making sure the reasons for delay are correctly recorded no matter how painful they are to reveal.