Application
– Everyone doing the right things right
Recently, as part of a broader
engagement, we were working with a client organization to help them
identify sources and root cause of cost in their business.
The easy solution would have been to focus on labor costs and head
count. However, the more
challenging was to look beyond the obvious. The key goal was to
actually fix the root cause and not merely solve the symptom.
The outcome was identifying over fifty sources of cost of which the
following is an example.
|
Layering
of Supervision
|
Inadequate
Equipment
|
|
Work
Bottlenecks
|
Flow
of Communication
|
|
Invalid
Work Generators
|
Lack
of or Conflicting Direction
|
|
Complex
Systems
|
Lack
of Quality Workforce
|
|
Backlogs
|
Business
Systems
|
|
Misuse
of Overtime
|
Service
Capabilities
|
|
Excessive
Administration
|
Unclear
Mission
|
|
Organizational
Structure
|
Inadequate
Facilities
|
|
Operational
Practices
|
Overstatement of Acceptable Levels of Performance
|
As you can see, the result was
not just fewer people doing the same old things, but the right kind of
people doing the right things right.
