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Vol 32 - No 03 - May 2006 Editorial: Response from Tim Franklin I welcome Jeremy Craig-Weston’s responses to my article as such healthy exchange should only add to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Commenting on some of the points which Jeremy makes, although not all of which were directly related to my original article, I would make the following observations. If a sales process is re-designed and subsequently results in lost orders then I would suggest that it is a result of a combination of a number of things, for example: the wrong people, insufficient or incorrect training, poor guidance, inadequate leadership and low employee commitment to the process. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but written to indicate that there needs to be an organisational climate which is conducive to Continuous Improvement. Another point made by Jeremy is that an improvement in one element of a system can be negatively displaced to another part of the overall system, and this I agree can be the case. This is where it is important to look at the overall Value Stream, as well as having improvement participants at specific process events from the other processes which may be impacted by a change in the process under scrutiny. Regarding pay and redundancy, in organisations who are able to truly embrace the ideology of Lean, I have witnessed superior wage rises occurring because the management can see the rising asset value of their employees as they contribute to organisation-wide improvements. Again, for organisations who adopt Continuous Improvement techniques proactively, before many of their sector rivals, they will be able to reduce selling prices and gain greater share, keep selling prices the same and generate more profit, or a combination of the two. Significant sales increases means more employees and the net result can be that jobs are made redundant, but not for people who can be redeployed into new positions, often creating career advancement opportunities. The last point I would comment on is that of Continuous Improvements not being open-ended. I disagree. However, I would agree that there is a point where diminishing returns cut-in when continuously improving a specific process, and in my experience, once a process gets over 60% throughput, it’s time then to look at a paradigm shift, a step change and then continue the Continuous Improvement activity from the new higher base. Tim Franklin, MIOM Related Topics:
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