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Problem Solving: 4 Simple Steps to Success

21 January, 2012 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Problem Solving

I was once told that success in life is as simple as getting your arms around a problem and knocking it off.  If you agree with the principle, (and there is not really a lot to disagree with), then by definition, problem solving leads to success.  Solving problems isn’t that difficult, it is just four […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: fessing up, problem solving, project management, root cause analysis, test and learn

Visual Analysis – It Would be a Crime not to Try

25 October, 2011 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Here is an interesting link for you (unless you are American in which case try here).  It is a crime map of the UK, it shows you where crime occurs, have a good look, where is it safer to live?  Nottingham or Padstow?  The answer is fairly obvious, in-fact a one eyed drug dealer in […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: clarity, monitoring, root cause analysis, visual management

The Five “Whys?”

29 September, 2011 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Five Whys?

I have an eight year old daughter, she is verging on perfect (well I am her Dad).  Unfortunately there are a number of bits where she is not so verging on perfect.  One of those is her constant questions, why why why why why?.  As the saying goes “It does my head in”. This is […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: continuous improvement, root cause analysis

Customer Service Surveys, What a Waste of Time

9 September, 2011 by James Lawther 6 Comments

The company I work for runs a management health screening scheme.  Once a year they pay for me to go to see a doctor who looks at me with disdain.  I was screened last week.  After an hour or so of checks and analysis (and not inconsiderable expense) the doctor told me: I drink too […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: clarity, customer surveys, root cause analysis

Fat Fingers and Process Bottlenecks

21 July, 2011 by James Lawther 3 Comments

All processes have a bottleneck, a rate limiting step, something that stops them from going further faster.   It is really important to know what the bottle neck is, because unless you open the bottleneck you will never get any better. Let’s take the mobile computer as an example.  I am sitting on a train writing […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, bottleneck, constraints, continuous improvement, information technology, root cause analysis, tampering

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