Three Kinds of Business Waste Robbing Your Profit!
A Systems Thinker can't help it; he or she sees waste everywhere—a scrap heap at a construction site, uneaten food piled on plates at a buffet, waiting time in a hospital emergency room, out of control government bureaucracy. Waste is part of life. However, excess waste can drive you out of business. Most small businesses are riddled with fatty waste like a bad steak!
The most important thing you can do to improve your business operation—to please customers and increase profit—is to reduce the waste buried in your business processes. This includes the office as well as the factory.
Trim the waste to fatten your bottom line!
What is Waste?
There are three improvement methodologies incorporated into Box TheoryTM and Box TheoryTM Gold software. Each looks at your operation in a little different way. However, each provides valuable insight for identifying the waste within your business systems and processes—your production, customer service, hiring, marketing, and so forth. Here are three types of waste you should be trying to eliminate:
- From Six Sigma - Waste is the variation from acceptable standards or customer expectations--the defects and delay in your business processes. How often do people make a mistake, causing loss of time and materials? Do you keep the mistakes and rework in your operation under one percent?
- From Lean Thinking - Waste is any step in a process flow that does not add value and ultimately benefit customers. Can you spot idle time, rework, unnecessary movement or handling, build-up of inventory, and so forth? Stop doing the little things that customers don't want to pay for, and you shouldn't either.
- From Theory of Constraints - Waste is the constraint—the weak link or bottleneck—that limits what goes out the door. What person, piece of equipment, or step in a process is bogging things down and preventing maximum throughput of sales and service? Focus on the weakest step in the process and elevate its performance. Hint: It's usually a system problem, not a people problem.
Waste creates frustration, drives up costs, and can even threaten the very existence of a business operation. I see waste everywhere. Most of it is subtle. Most of it goes undetected by business owners. Most of it is preventable. A water faucet releasing one drop per second wastes over 2000 gallons in a year. What can you do to plug the leaks in your organization?
Get More Green and More Greenbacks!
The "green" movement" is all about eliminating waste. Every business—your business included—should become green. If you don't need to do it for the environment, do it to create happy customers, higher profits and an efficient, smooth-running operation.
Walk around and look at your business through the eyes of a Systems Thinker. Look for defects and delays, over-flowing in-baskets, unnecessary effort, bottlenecks, and even customer complaints. Then go improve your business systems and reap the abundant rewards!
Wishing You Prosperous Times,
Ron
P.S - Learn more about Six Sigma, Lean Thinking and the Theory of Constraints by getting my eCourse, Box TheoryTM: Double Your Profit with High-Performance Systems and Processes. Say goodbye to the hidden and unnecessary waste that is costing you big bucks!