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Vol 28 - No 05 - June 2002 Process Innovation and Excellence in an Age of Change Over 50 members and guests attended this excellent talk in Coventry on 25th April by Nick Lawrence. Nick has presented before at Institute events, but here was an opportunity for many more to hear him. It was clear that he was confident with his material and had prepared it well. Superior processes do not just happen and we get what we measure. Nick told the tale of a bus company who believed they were judged by how well they adhered to the published timetable. Road conditions are not always predictable, so inevitably schedules suffer on occasions. This particular company appeared to solve the problem by driving past bus stops- without stopping! This maximised schedule adherence, but did not satisfy their customers. In order to open our eyes as to how a process could be improved through a considered review, Nick asked the audience for their estimate on how long a particular process would take. After getting some apparently acceptable suggestions, he showed a film clip that illustrated quite a different answer. (I can't say more without spoiling it for others who may see it in the future.) Using another example, which again everyone could relate to, the audience was shown how process changes could be made to achieve significantly improved results - how do some areas get their parliamentary election results declared in under an hour? Nick used a well-chosen mix of talk, slides, eal life examples, videos and entertaining anecdotes to put over his points, which was much appreciated by those attending. As an example, skilful use of the 5 Why technique explained how the diameter of a NASA rocket is related to the size of the rear end of two horses! Members went away with ideas and thoughts on how to look at processes and to think about them more widely. Nick suggested that given a problem, one should try to have at least three solutions and to allow the best parts of each solution to be chosen, rather than selecting one as 'it's better than the other one'. I would encourage other members who get the opportunity to listen to this or a similar presentation, to do so as soon as they can. An appeal from our new Chief Executive, Chris Tyler, generated some leads for future events in the area.Some were no doubt inspired by their experiences over the previous couple of hours. Once again, thanks to Nick for a good evening. Steve Jewsbury MIOM Related Topics:
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