Lean Business Drivers

The Authors describe how to create a very efficient money-making organization to survive and thrive in today's tough business environment by becoming a 'World Class" Organization.In today's fast-paced rapidly changing business environment your Company can no longer just count on the Business Leader or even the Leadership Team to manage the business. You must involve all your employees in the success of your Company. Your van driver is no longer just a driver. He or she must come to work every day seeking better ways to do his or her job. Every employee must be aware of the processes they use to execute their duties and continually be searching for ways to do their job better-error free. Continually improve or perish.You must create a very efficient money-making organization to survive. This means you must be able to compete with the best of companies. You do this by becoming a "World Class" Organization. By that I mean you must deliver the highest quality services and products at the lowest possible cost when your Customer wants them - no sooner or later. Quality, price and delivery, this is what we all want when we buy goods and services.To be "World Class" you must optimize all the productive resources at your disposal. The talent-your employees, the equipment-your business systems employed properly and materials that meets or exceeds your Customers' requirements. Quality levels approaching Six Sigma (3.4 failures per million opportunities) with an ultimate goal of zero defects in everything you do-failures and errors virtually eliminated. Cost reduction becomes part of the culture-credits and refunds must be kept near zero. Keeping Customer commitments all the time, which includes delivering when your Customer wants you to. This is where your business must be. The Lean drivers described in this book are the tools you will use to build your Lean organization. What we are trying to do here is to encourage the use of the tools that virtually any company - big or small - can afford and can put to good use in short order. The idea is to pay for the cost of the implementation as it is being implemented and then some. A return on your investment should come immediately after you put the tools to work in your business. The Lean drivers are Mistake Proofing; Self-Directed Cross Functional Teams; The Workout Process; Flexibility; Succession Planning and Expense Control. Inherent in all of these tools are the elements of employee motivation and empowerment. Anyone of these tools can be used separately but taken together they will enable you to build a very lean money-making business.Author Ronald L. Buckley is a recognized operations Lean business leader, with over thirty-five years of experience and expertise in improving quality, reducing costs and delighting his Customers-recently as a VP for General Electric. Lucinda Buckley has been an organizer, trainer and facilitator to a variety of groups and organizations. Currently, Ron and Lucinda are having fun as Consultants helping CEO's and Management Professionals grow their companies by optimizing all available resources. An investment made in reading this book will prove to be fruitful not only to the reader but also to all those individuals over whom the reader has direct and indirect influence.