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The Rules of the Workplace

27 September, 2015 by James Lawther 3 Comments

The 20 rules: Prioritise the work Don’t make your customers wait There is always more work than people Study the work Understand how the work works Standardise the work If the work is important write it down Train your staff Make the work easy Build systems Stream line the work Find the bottleneck Clean the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Tools & Techniques, Wild Cards Tagged With: bottleneck, communication, customer focus, effective meetings, error proofing, five s, gemba, lean thinking, learning, process mapping, service improvement, SlideShare, standardisation, systems thinking, visual management

Where is Your Pilot Plant?

22 March, 2015 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Pilot Plant Experiment

To improve you must learn Unfortunately, you only learn when you mess things up.  You only learn how to ride a bike by falling off one.  If you didn’t fall off, then you didn’t learn (I guess you already knew how to ride it). If you try something new and it works first time, fresh […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: continuous improvement, innovation, no substitute for experience, service improvement, test and learn

A Stitch in Time…

19 November, 2014 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Stitches

Running a customer service centre is hard It is a constant battle, trying to minimise cost and maximise customer service. But we all know the game, we get employed to play it: Squeeze your head count down as far as you dare Ride the variations in customer demand Manage the backlog Set up a turnaround […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: abandon rate, call centre, capacity planning, customer focus, service improvement, supply and demand

The Basics

12 January, 2014 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Distraction

If you run a corner store: You must open from 7 ’till 11 You should stock milk, bread, toothpaste… And you know to you will work Sundays If you run a fast food restaurant: The food must be filling The food should be tasty (enough) And you know to keep the toilets clean If you […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: focus, purpose, service improvement

Sexism and Process Improvement

7 November, 2013 by James Lawther 5 Comments

The Big Five are five symphony orchestras in the United States that “lead the field in musical excellence and calibre of musicianship”. If you went to listen to them in the 1970’s, you would have noticed that about 5% of those excellent musicians were female. If you do the same thing today that proportion is more like a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, human nature, service improvement

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