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Vol 32 - No 06 - September 2006 Book review : The Oliver Wight Class A Checklist for Business Excellence If you were to visit my home and look at my many book shelves, 5 books would stand-out as looking rather tired and ‘dog-eared’. These are “The Goal” and “It’s Not Just Luck”, by Eli Goldratt, “Competitive Manufacturing” by Hal Mather, “The Lean Toolbox” by John Bicheno, and “The Ollie Wight Checklist”. Therefore, I was please to be asked to review the latest reincarnation of the latter. In the early to mid 90’s when I was working for Kodak, the checklist was in its very early stages and I like to think that perhaps we contributed to its development. Structure The first 16 pages are a preamble looking at how to use the checklist, the journey to excellence and the improvement process – the tendency is to skip these but they contain words of wisdom, which although not new, people new to the checklist would do well to heed. The book is then divided into 9 sections, each containing a series of major and sub-statement against which the reader can assess performance on a scale of 0 (not doing) to 5 (excellent). The sections are: The sub-statements provide guidance on what ‘good’ should look like within an operation or company and the majority of categories and industry independent and so have wide applicability. Secrets of Success The book is not intended to be universal panacea rather a guide to promote discussion, debate and action. One of the challenges is to convert the many excellent points into specifics for your operation. My advice to anyone considering buying this book is; be prepared to be depressed and exhilarated at the same time. Depressed, because all elements of the checklist are essential to sustained business excellence and once you start to note all the elements necessary to honestly score 5 in just one area the size of the task becomes apparent. Exhilarated, because the book provides a ready made guide to driving improvement. However, don’t expect miracles, the Checklist highlights the areas to be addressed it doesn’t tell you how. In conclusion, the Class A Checklist, when coupled with appropriate education and the desire for excellence, will provide benefits; in my Kodak experience far beyond those which we could reasonably have expected, but there aren’t any short-cuts and make sure you have a good guide. Derek Thomason, MIOM Related Topics:
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