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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

Heavy Metal and Process Improvement

15 May, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The checklist It isn’t very rock and roll is it?  Checklists are up there in the train spotting school of management.  The sort of activity carried out by dull earnest people who ought to put their clipboards down and get out a little more. Tiresome and tedious. Heavy metal I’m not big into heavy metal. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accident prevention, checklist, devil is in the detail, operational excellence, visual management

The Sure Thing

28 September, 2014 by James Lawther 4 Comments

white elephant

Pain and despair Imagine you run a servicing centre. You have a staff of 100 who fill in forms to order things for customers. Maybe they process applications Maybe they fill in patient’s details Maybe they capture the details of car repairs You get the gist of it… Lots of people, lots of information and lots of screw […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, capital investment, continuous improvement, devil is in the detail, information technology, listening, office productivity, root cause analysis, systems thinking

Details Matter

14 February, 2014 by James Lawther 8 Comments

POSH Bags There is a rumour about Steve Jobs.  It is alleged that he sacked an employee at one of the first Apple stores. Why?  Because she bought cheap and nasty plastic bags for customers to take their expensive purchases home in.  The story may be a complete fabrication, but history has shown that Steve was […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: Apple, devil is in the detail, service design, service differentiation

Have You Killed any Swans Today?

29 June, 2013 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Swans

We live and work within systems, systems that connect things.  One way or another everything is connected. That sounds like psycho-babble, so let me give you an example: Legislation leaves swans starving The In the far north of England on the border with Scotland is the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.  In 1994 the flock of swans […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: devil is in the detail, point optimisation, service design, systems thinking

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