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How to Make a Pile of Money

14 October, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Continuous Improvement When he died last year Feodor Ingvar Kamprad was worth — depending on who you listen to —  somewhere between 3 and 28 billion dollars.  According to Forbes he was one of the ten richest men in the world.  How you can misplace $25 billion and still be one of the world’s richest […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: continuous improvement, devil is in the detail, lean thinking, purpose, Tim Harford

The Quick Fix Makes Things Worse

5 October, 2019 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Shifting the burden Lord I have had a bad day!   I knew it was going to be a bad day when my diary showed I was stuck in back to back meetings for eight hours on the trot. Worse still, those meetings had been shrunk to 30 minutes each.  That way I could have […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: root cause analysis, short term thinking, systems thinking

Centre of Excellence or Management Folly?

28 July, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The centre of excellence How many times have you heard the claim “We are building a centre of excellence”? Or, even more triumphant, “We are a centre of excellence!” It is great management speak. It shows strategic drive and direction. Every thrusting young manager wants a centre of excellence, why wouldn’t they? There are a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: cheap and nasty, collaboration, cost saving, human nature, organisation, point optimisation, silo management, systems thinking, targets, world class

All That Glisters…

23 July, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The Next Big Thing

The next big thing There is a revolution going on in the world of medicine.  Robotic surgery equipment is being installed in operating theatres across the western world.  The robots allow surgeons to make far smaller incisions and operate much more precisely.  The surgeon doesn’t have to contend with slippery instruments and the robot has […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: beliefs, capital investment, checklist, human nature, information technology

Standards and Innovation

14 June, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Using Standards

Riding roughshod over the standard We had a bit of an issue last week.  We were trying something new and it went — how can I best put it? — belly up.  In fact its belly went so far up it ended up in a conversation with our risk and compliance team.  They were displeased.  […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: innovation, standardisation

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