Most traditional applications of operational excellence programs, methods and tools have focused on manufacturing operations and paid little attention to all of the activities that have to take place before an order actually gets released to the shop floor. In fact, across industries these activities account 70 - 90% of the quoted lead time. While many companies have deployed continuous improvement with fantastic results in manufacturing; those results do not translate into noticable improvements from the customers view. The main reason for this situation lies in the difficulty most organizations have with measuring activity in the office, identifying wasted activity, and modifying the process in such a way that the waste is engineered out of the process altogether.
LVSI provides initial working session to introduce the concepts of Office and Service Excellence to your organization. In the session, you and your managers will use the basic tools to review your organization's goals, develop a macro business process model, and establish key performance metrics. Senior and mid-level management is usually the target audience for this activity. Mentors will work with you to design and administer a Macro Process Assessment. It is an overall study of your business unit that examines the important aspects of customer value, the organization's strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. We begin with the macro process definition and performance metrics developed by the management team. A criterion based evaluation tool is then designed to assure that the characteristics that influence your priority business concerns are evaluated.
Mentors will help you select and customize the elements of the Process Value Management (PVM) methodology consistent with current best practices in the discipline. We will help you develop your internal capability to perpetuate the application of Continuous Process Improvement throughout your organization. Dedicated mentors will train and coach your internal Process Improvement Facilitators in the use of the methodology and tools. Experienced practitioners will partner with your staff to lead one or more pilot Process Value Management (PVM) events. The events will address one of the vital opportunities that will be identified during the macro process assessment. Process Improvement Teams will "improve" key business processes beginning with understanding the current process and concluding with implementation of changes.
Mentors will provide the guidance, coaching, and feedback to give your staff the "live" experience as process consultants. Each development session with your staff will include specific observations, complete analysis of individual and team performance, and personal feedback. We will support your staff development until they are capable of working on their own. Experienced practitioners will work with the team leadership to assure the implementation of the team's action plan. Although this is considered the "final" phase in any process improvement effort, it is actually the beginning phases.