What do we do?

We help businesses improve their bottom-line profits by helping them improve productivity, service levels and also the levels of innovation within their product offerings.

What makes us different?

We use a unique combination of process improvement techniques such as Lean from the Japanese automotive industry combined with innovative thinking techniques from the UK’s design sector. This allows companies not only to improve their productivity but also to increase the levels of innovation within their business and products.

Our Approach

We work with the Directors and Senior Managers to identify the correct direction for the business in order to secure future profitability and growth.

We then work with the staff that operate the processes on a daily basis to help them to identify where the opportunities are, and then implement the improvements. There is always a big emphasis on payback and we normally run a 3-day improvement workshop that will generate at least £50,000 p.a. of saving (dependent on the size of the business). For larger businesses, it is not unusual to identify savings over £1M p.a.

We put a big emphasis on fun, and we use a range of games and business simulations to get the message across and ensure that people enjoy being part of the improvement workshop.

5-Stage Process

How we do it

Typically, we carry out a trial workshop within the business to prove the savings that can be achieved, by focusing on one part of the business process.

Then, with the Directors and Senior Managers, we undertake an Improvement Strategy Review to identify the direction the business will take in order to improve its profits and growth. Typically, the business will choose one of three types of strategy:

• UNIQUE products and services, always looking to be first to market with the latest innovative offerings.
• SERVICE levels that far exceed the competition and align the business processes to satisfy the customer’s current and future requirements.
• PROCESS or operational excellence to deliver cost-effective products and services with the highest productivity levels.

We then help the company understand what its future state vision looks like, as well as its current state position. The difference between the current and the future state forms the improvement strategy to take the business forward. This improvement strategy is then cascaded into all areas of the business using techniques such as Policy Deployment, and visual metrics in the form of Dashboards are put in place to monitor progress as well as identify future improvement areas.

The key to the success of the improvement strategy is to engage all members of staff within the organisation and gain their buy-in. We help achieve this by training staff in the latest improvement tools and techniques to give them the confidence to implement the improvement strategy. We use staff awareness sessions or the more in-depth training of Improvement Facilitators who lead the internal improvement workshops. Staff are also involved in these workshops to help identify the areas for improvement and then implement the actions.