Implementation Partners tailors the Assess-Implement-Monitor (AIM) approach to each client’s specific situation.
Assessment begins with an understanding of the current business situation and strategy. Depending on the client’s needs and priorities, we may employ some of the following approaches:
- Strategy Development can help to create a new business strategy (or Product Strategy) when needed, or the client may just need a Strategy Implementation approach to bridge the “strategy-execution gap” between the leadership’s intent and their subordinate departments’ current activities
- Functional Reviews are a deep self-assessment of the organization, delivering assistance to department leaders who are assigned to formally present their senior leadership team with data on their processes, customer requirements, process effectiveness, staffing and/or equipment efficiency, and prioritized opportunities to improve; although the process looks at financial data as well, this approach is much deeper than a typical budget review
- Value Stream Reviews, a variant of the Functional Review, allow a cross-functional group to come together to conduct a similarly deep analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of a collaborative, cross-functional process
- Process Maturity Assessment is a third variation on the Functional Review, measuring the extent of customer/process infrastructure and focus
- Clients acquiring other companies (or being acquired) use our Process Diligence techniques to conduct a quick external assessment of a business, delivering a report that quantifies the benefits and risks of the potential deal from a business process perspective
- Voice of the Customer (VOC) provides clients a key lever to retain and Grow market share by identifying and validating important requirements of their customers, providing both direction and actionable information to guide improvement efforts
- Most tactical improvement projects (described below in the Implementation Phase) require a brief Pre-Project Assessment to identify project scope, interview key stakeholders, make an initial project plan, and validate the business case for chartering the effort
Implementation covers a broad array of services that drive improved results for clients. The approach for each effort is tailored precisely to the client’s situation, and we select tools from multiple disciplines and methodologies as needed in order to drive optimum impact for the client. Some of the specific situations and approaches are:
- Engaged Team Performance builds upon Lean and Six Sigma process improvement tools, focusing more deeply on the people who drive value for the customer and the business, how to sustain those teams to work efficiently and effectively, and guiding the managers who lead those teams
- Action Forum (also called Kaizen or Workout at various companies) is a collaborative approach to problem-solving, often deployed as a 2- to 4-day session to drive a team to agree and act upon straight-forward solutions
- An Action Forum variant for Cost Take-Out (also called Cost Action Teams) quickly generates and implements ideas to drive immediate financial impact
- Process Streamlining uses an approach called Transactional Lean to remove wasted effort from a process, align the process flow and resource levels to the customers’ needs, and drive performance efficiency from the workforce
- Lean Turnaround takes a similar approach, but drives more-radical improvements by dedicating significant effort to redesigning an organization that is under pressure to change its performance and cost structure
Lean Manufacturing reduces cycle time and manufacturing cost by optimizing work value, process flow, inventory/pull, and human performance of operational teams
- Six Sigma Improvement projects focus on reducing “defects” caused by the process, following the DMAIC methodology (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) to analyze root causes of a problem and deploy targeted solutions to reduce variation in performance
- Six Sigma Design techniques develop and prioritize customer requirements, creating robust new processes, products, and/or automated systems that deliver breakthrough capabilities
- Fluid Form Organizational Design is a cutting-edge approach to getting the most from an organization’s greatest asset – people – through aligning and incenting them to work on the right priorities at the right time, including processes delivering value or projects for the future; Fluid Form reduces functional boundaries, layers, and communication barriers
- Training and Certification services are available for transfer of Lean and Six Sigma project facilitation skills to internal client resources
Monitoring is absolutely essential to maintaining the gains from strategy implementation, process improvement, and organizational design. While every approach listed above contains a “Control” component for sustaining process and performance, a few approaches deserve special attention:
