Brand and Brand followers

Life style and living cost creates brand. This Brand is followed by the people who are crazy on it. Whenever we interact with young people, they speak about brands and its brand ambassadors, So Is this craze on the brand is justified ? is it really required.
May be industrial products and house holds may add some advantage but in and everything that come across in our day to day activity is really needs branding? Brands create an identify of it self, value for Money ? is what is depends upon the perception.
Branded clothes comes in sizes that for some one it requires alteration and some it is over sized.
But is these actually have the durability, comfort and really Value for Money !
The thought is higher the price and greater the brand, lesser its utilization and waste of money. Some of the branded can be only worn on some auspicious occasions so why Spend much on this one day !

Life is useless - Ecclesiastes.

The book of Ecclesiastes contains the thoughts of the "the Philosopher" a man who reflected deeply on how short and contradictory human life is whith its mysterious injustices and frustrations and concluded that "LIFE IS USELESS".

1. life is useless
You spend ur life working, labouring, and wht do u have to show for it ? Generation come and generations go but the world stays just the same.

2. No one remember wise man and no one remembers fools. We must all die - wise and foolish alike.

3. A time for everything

4. I have also learnt why people work so hard to suceed; it is because they envy their neighbours.

5. if you love money, you will never be satisfied; if you long to be rich you will never get all you want . It is useless.

6. A man may have hundred childrens and live a long time, but no matter how long he lives, if he does not get his share of happiness and does not recieve an decent burial, then I say a baby born dead is better off.

7. A good reputation is better than expensive perfume; and the day you die is better than the day you are born.

8. God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated

9. Righteous men get the punishment of the wicked and wicked men get the reward of the righteous.

10. Go ahead - eat your food and be happy; drink your wine and be cheerful its all right with God.

11. Feasting makes you happy and wine cheers you up, but you can't have either without Money

12. Invest your money  in foreign trade, and one of these days you will make profit. Put your investments in several places - many places in fact - because you never know what kind of bad luck you are going to have in this world.

Whats you thought !

Calculating Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI)

The Customer Satisfaction Index represents the overall satisfaction level of that customer as one number, usually as a percentage. Plotting this Satisfaction Index of the customer against a time scale shows exactly how well the supplier is accomplishing the task of customer satisfaction over a period of time.
Since the survey feedback comes from many respondents in one organization, the bias due to individual perception needs to be accounted for.
This can be achieved by calculating the Satisfaction Index using an importance weighting based on an average of 1.
Calculate the average of all the weightings given by the customer. Divide the individual weightings by this average to arrive at the weighting on the basis of average of 1. Customer's higher priorities are weighted more than 1 and lower priorities less than 1. The average of the Customers Importance Scores are calculated and each individual score is expressed as a factor of that average. To understand the calculations consider following example:
The following table shows the Weightings & Scores assigned on a scale of 1 - 10 by the Customer.

 
Parameter(P)      Weighting (A )                Score( B)Weighting (avg. of 1)    C Weighting (avg. of 1) * Score D = B *C

P1                         7                                                8                                               1.17                              9.24

P2                        5                                                4                                                 0.83                             3.33

P3                        9                                                8                                                 1.50                             12.00

P4                       3                                                 3                                                 0.50                               1.50

P5                      6                                                  4                                                  1.00                              4.00

        Average = 6.00                              Average = 5.40                                                                           CSI = 6.01




A = Average Weighting assigned by all respondents for each parameter

B = Average Score assigned by all respondents for each parameter
Avg. Weighting = (7 + 5 + 9 + 3 + 6) / 5 = 6

C = Weighting based on avg. of 1 = Individual Weighting / avg. Weighting

D = Weighted Score = Score * Average Weighting = B * C
Satisfaction Index CSI = Average of (Weighted Scores)

CSI = (9.24 + 3.33 + 12 + 1.5 + 4.0) / 5 = 6.01

Since the scale used was 1 - 10, CSI = 60.10%

Thus Customer Satisfaction can be expressed as a single number that tells the supplier where he stands today and an Improvement plan can be chalked out to further improve his performance so as to get a loyal customer.

Top Management

In bringing any change, management of the organizational undertakes or any new initiative the the company plans to implement down the line the grudge is that top management is not giving its right attention or poor involvement.

Many initiative during the startup the Management is fully involved and it hands over to the experienced and competent people in the team. This infact is the right way in doing the things.

I once met the CEO of one of the leading real estate players of India. There was an discussion about the systems failure and we say the top management involvement was low and hence the system failed. Be it Quality, Environment or any other Management systems, the fact being the failure is the benefits of the systems that the company should or ROI of the systems are not measured. However never does anyone thinks why these are not realized ? Its because everyone in the organization failed.
What is top Management means?Highest ranking executives (with titles such as chairman/chairwoman, chief executive officer, managing director, president, executive directors, executive vice-presidents, etc.) responsible for the entire enterprise. Top management translates the policy (formulated by the board-of-directors) into goals, objectives, and strategies, and projects a shared-vision of the future. It makes decisions that affect everyone in the organization, and is held entirely responsible for the success or failure of the enterprise.
This means everyone in the organization is responsible for the success or failure, because the top management delegates its responsibilities.

I was discussing an issue with Sr. Manager of one of the organization, and i informed that the system should be reviewed with help of top management. I was surprised to get an response saying yes the top management should review !
so then what is the use of Sr. Manager ? or its just an designation without any responsibility and authority. !

Does CB audits add value to organisation ?

I had opportunity to be an auditor for one of the leading certification bodies, I did not enjoy the job of conducting the audits at the clients place when I found the inputs which I gave were sidelined. I came to know that the Certification bodies could not raise any Non Conformity due to varied reason and main reason is that certification bodies wanted the clients in good books.
In one of the surveillance audit, the CB auditor was just dragging to find the fault. He just wanted to know the change that was due to clients and he wanted to know the exactly how we find then? He wanted to know the change in the position of cutouts. At the end of three hours of drill down they were able to exactly match.

During closing meeting, the auditor said all things are systematic and good. ?

What was the value added in this whole cycle.

Expert should accompany the auditors and external audit should give some time of value addition to the company. Internal audits at least come out with observations or non conformity that the process is deviated. When will the external audits come with findings ??

Good definition of Quality

Came across good definition of Quality....very relevant to our way of working also.....

A gentleman was once visiting a temple under construction.
In the temple premises, he saw a sculptor making an idol of God.
Suddenly he saw, just a few meters away, another identical idol was lying.
Surprised he asked the sculptor, do you need two statutes of the same idol. No said the sculptor. We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage. The gentleman examined the statue. No apparent damage was visible. Where the damage is? Asked the gentleman. There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.
Where are you going to keep the idol? The sculptor replied that it will be installed on a pillar 20 feet high.


When the idol will be 20 feet away from the eyes of the beholder, who is going to know that there is scratch on the nose? The gentleman asked. The sculptor looked at the gentleman, smiled and said, ' The God knows it and I know it '.

The desire to excel should be exclusive of the fact whether someone appreciates it or not. Quality is a drive from Inside not Outside.

ಚೇಂಜ್ Management

Change management and implementing change in any organisation has become an painful area. The word change brings panic to the mind of people working in any area. They feel threatened about it, different methods have been put in place like creating awareness, making individual feel know the implication before it is implemented. However the fear still is left in.........

One of the main reason for resistance to change is Confusion.
Which directly or indirectly reflects or resist the change. Dale Carneige shares his experience in managing change using three principles.
1. To collect Information (Create Awareness)
2. Analyse the Information
3. Take decision and stick to the decision what ever may be the implication.

Project Quality Plan

Quality can be defined as meeting the customer's expectations or exceeding the customer expectations achieved by way of deliverables and/or activities performed to produce those deliverables.
Project Quality Plan can be defined as a set of activities planned at the beginning of the project that helps achieve Quality in the Project being executed. The Purpose of the Project Quality Plan is to define these activities / tasks that intends to deliver products while focussing on achieveing customer's quality expectations. These activities / tasks are defined on the basis of the quality standards set by the organization delivering the product.
Project Quality Plan identifies which Quality Standards are relevant to the project and determines how can they be satisfied. It includes the implementation of Quality Events (peer reviews, checklist execution) by using various Quality Materials (templates, standards, checklists) available within the organization.The holding of the Quality Event is termed as Quality Control. As an output of the various activities, Quality Metrics or Measurements are captured which assist in continuous improvement of Quality thus adding to the inventory of Lessons Learned. Quality Assurance deals in preparation of the Quality Plan and formation of organization wide standards.


Guidelines to write the Project Quality Plan


Project Quality Plan should be written with the objective to provide project management with easy access to quality requirements and should have ready availability of the procedures and standards thus mentioned.
The following list provides you the various Quality Elements that should be included in a detailed Project Quality Plan:
Management Responsibility. Describes the quality responsibilities of all stakeholders.
Documented Quality Management System. This refers to the existing Quality Procedures that have been standardized and used within the organization.
Design Control. This specifies the procedures for Design Review, Sign-Off, Design Changes and Design Waivers of requirements.
Document Control. This defines the process to control Project Documents at each Project Phase.
Purchasing. This defines Quality Control and Quality Requirements for sub-contracting any part / whole part of the project.
Inspection Testing. This details the plans for Acceptance Testing and Integration Testing.
Nonconformance. This defines the procedures to handle any type of nonconformance work. The procedures include defining responsibilities, defining conditions and availability of required documentation in such cases.
Corrective Actions. This describes the procedures for taking Corrective Actions for the problems encountered during project execution.
Quality Records. This describes the procedures for maintaining the Quality Records (metrices, variance reports, executed checklists etc) during project execution as well as after the project completion.
Quality Audits. An internal audit should be planned and implemented during each phase of the project.
Training. This should specify any training requirements for the project team.


Evaluating your Project Quality Plan
For quality assurance to be effective, two things must be ensured:


First, the Project Quality plan must be sufficient to achieve the required quality standards expected of the organization. In this regard the plan must not only be specific and detailed listing all quality requirements and standards, but also include all the steps taken to ensure that those requirements and standards are met.
Secondly, quality assurance (i.e. final product testing) should be independent of the project itself (as well as the project manager). This comes down from the project management guidelines for effective quality assurance, and builds on a broad-based, organizational approach to standards-based product testing.
The development of a Project Quality Plan is a team process that depends as much on communicating information as it does on planning. The key objective is to create a cohesive dialog and subsequently develop awareness of potential quality issues assurance. Based on this awareness, project managers can prepare plans and actions to counter any weaknesses or deficiencies in the project execution, thus ensuring that all quality standards are met effectively.

Ten Step Method to Continuous Improvement.

Continuous improvement is a type of change that is focused on increasing the effectiveness and/or efficiency of an organization to fulfill its policies and objectives. It is not limited to quality initiatives. Improvement in business strategy, business results, and customer, employee, and supplier business relationships can be subject to continual improvement.

Putting it simply, it means "getting better -- all the time."

Here are the ten steps to undertaking continuous improvement:

1.Determine current performance.
2.Establish a need to improve.
3.Obtain commitment and define the improvement objective.
4.Organize the diagnostic resources.
5.Carry out research and analysis to discover the cause of current performance.
6.Define and test solutions that will accomplish the improvement objective.
7.Produce improvement plans which specify how and by whom the changes will be implemented.
8.Identify and overcome any resistance to the change.
9.Implement the change.
10.Put in place controls to hold new levels of performance, and repeat step one.

Eight steps for successful Six Sigma implementation

Eight steps for successful Six Sigma implementation.

Step One: Burning Platform and Shared Vision

In order to implement or even think about implementing Lean or Six Sigma methodologies, we need to have a burning platform. The burning platform could take several forms: "We are suffering huge quality losses and it accounts for more than 45 percent of our costs,” “our competitors are gaining our market share every quarter by 12 percent,” etc. Without a burning platform like this, organizations seldom have the motivation to implement TPS (Lean) or Six Sigma or TQM or any continuous improvement initiative.

Many are cynical about implementing Six Sigma. They'll ask: Why Six Sigma? Why Quality? Why Process Excellence? It does not help, so why do we need to do this? Often we in the Six Sigma fraternity have to meet and manage such cynics, and the only way to counter this pushback is to have a common vision across the organization, such as, “If I had a choice I would like to be best rather than biggest.”

Let me tell you how a seemingly small e-mail from a software programmer leads to a common standard across the whole of IBM; this is just an example of having a common understanding or vision across an organization.

Louis Gerstner, former Chairman of IBM, normally received almost 100 e-mails a day from employees at various levels. One day, a software programmer sent him an e-mail detailing the complicated system of internal procedures required to obtain software from another division. “Going through that much bureaucracy for a $100 IBM product is ludicrous,” wrote the programmer.

This was brought up during the next meeting, and a couple of days later a message went out from the chairman stating, “Henceforth it will be our policy to share with our colleagues enthusiastically and without added cost whatever we develop.”

Now having said that, I want to be best rather than biggest; how do I spread this vision, which is the first step in successful implementation? Let me start this with what we did in our company. When we started our journey, the Process Excellence team wanted to make Six Sigma a great success, so we ensured that the CEO was the first person in the company to understand Six Sigma and to be trained on the methodology.

With this task accomplished, everything else started falling in place since Six Sigma became a vision across the organization. Hence to drive organization vision and value across our workforce, customers, partners and suppliers, we needed to have our key leadership aligned towards a common vision. This ensures that the organization environment is amenable to change and able to drive change, leveraging innovation and technology as the key tools.

Lastly, we need to take action to attain our vision; this ensures that we gain visibility and strong support from leadership. Leadership sponsors ensure we meet our organization vision, thereby attaining excellence.

Step Two: Resources

Now let me get into step two of success. It’s pretty simple: You pay peanuts and you get monkeys, and your entire Six Sigma plan is heading towards disaster.

This is true to any resource. As Robert Bosch says, “He has lots of money since he pays good wages.” Do not hesitate to hire the right resource at the right price. This is applicable to any resource, be it man, material or technology.

Resources alone do not help us in ensuring we are successful… we need to deploy them as a team, and this team should act as a change agent. As an organization we must emphasize empowering the team to carry out the initiatives, and hence we need domain expertise and knowledge.

Let me share a personal example on selection process. We had finalized a candidate for a Black Belt position in our customer service process. During my interview I asked him, “What was the most wonderful experience in your life,” for which he replied, “The six months I spent working in a farm with no people, no telephone and no tension.”

Here is a candidate who was saying he wanted no connectivity, and we were looking to hire him for a customer service-oriented position. I ran to my boss and told him he might not fit in, but the damage was already done; he was hired, but he left within three months. The point I am trying to make is it’s not only money but also the fit of the resource which matters.

We need to take care of our resources both in terms of wages and also the resource fit and commitment to implementing the shared vision.

Step Three: Teach

As the proverb says, if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to catch a fish he'll eat for a lifetime.

For Six Sigma to survive for a lifetime, we need to teach, or rather train, our resources to be powerful change agents. This can be attained by ensuring our leadership team is 100 percent trained as well as our grass root level team.

Hence, any amount of Six Sigma Yellow Belt,Green Belt, or Black Belt training is good to increase organizational awareness and to increase our QDNA. Ultimately, success lies in implementing at the grass root level, and for training it’s absolutely necessary that the resource has good mentoring skills. There is also a saying, “You can lead a horse to the water, but cannot make it drink.” So the resources identified for training should be the right resources and should share the organization’s shared vision.

Step Four: Prioritize

You have a vision, which has ensured you get the right resource, and now that you have organization-wide awareness at the top and at the grass root level, next comes the prioritization.

Have we listened to our customer? Is it linked to our business goals? Have we done a thorough CTQ tree analysis is what we need to first ensure that we do?

We need to learn what to overlook and where to take risk, and the question here is how good we are in terms of risk mitigation and expectation management in terms of meeting the key expectation of our organization’s goals.

Step Five: Ownership

With ownership comes empowerment and a sense of pride, and here integrity plays a key role that ensures that we have team commitment, accountability and engagement. Just like the golden rule for real estate is “location, location, location,” the Golden Rule for a Six Sigma Black Belt is “relationship, relationship, relationship.” This is the key for success in terms of driving commitment, accountability and engagement since it ensures proper ownership in the whole process.

Step Six: Measurement

Creating a measurement system ensures a proper baseline. To ensure that we achieve a set target, we must have an objective decision making analysis of variation.

The key for measurement is to get to the cost of quality right. When I had just completed my engineering degree and was working as a trainee engineer in an engineering firm, I was posted to the field warehouse to take stock of all the nuts, bolts and other parts, and now I was in a situation where I thought, “Hey, what I am I doing here? If I start counting each and every nut I will be spending weeks doing this task, which is not a right way to measure.” I did not want to spend weeks doing this since I would not learn anything, so I devised a way to count the nuts and bolts by working on a system of weighing the parts in large batches and converting the same into units. When my manager found out I took only a fraction of the time to count from the earlier method that had been followed for years, I was moved to field engineering, and I went on to handle the complete field quality within six months.

“What can’t be measured cannot be improved,” but we need to devise a right way to measure to ensure we are on a faster pace to achieving objective decision making. Having too many measures on our scorecard shifts our attention away from the critical few. We need to identify and measure the key leading indicators instead of measuring the many lagging indicators (which is a pitfall most organizations fall into!).

Step Seven: Governance (Review)

The key to project or program sustenance is to have a proper (required) governance structure. Improper governance/poor governance/too much governance can lead to the vision falling apart.

A business quality council at the top level of the organization can smooth and clear all hurdles; this would create synergy and also clear ways for adhering to timelines.

Proper governance would help us create a best practice sharing forum, which would help to replicate Six Sigma projects and would also highlight key challenges. Without governance (regularly scheduled productive meetings/reviews), course correction and guidance to the organization’s employees would be affected and ultimately the vision would be lost.

Step Eight: Recognition

Rewards and recognition plays a key role in ensuring that a Six Sigma team does not resign and renegotiate. Rewards and recognition are what create energy in the implementation system both at the top level and the grass root level and drives innovation throughout the organization.

Proper rewards and recognition ensures there is consistency in achieving excellent performance. Let me quote my personal example on reward and recognition at a grass roots level. During my days as a Quality engineer we got a note from one of our biggest customers whom we used to supply springs; they are one of the largest automobile manufacturers in India and we were supplying springs for them. The note was to reduce the price of our springs by 10 percent, and we were in a fix. We did everything possible. Many changes happened across the company; improvements ensured we could reduce the price by around seven percent but we still needed a three percent reduction. My boss who was a well know quality expert asked me to go to one of our key suppliers who supplied spring wires and work with the supplier to reduce the cost of making wires.

Let me tell you, the first day when I went for a meeting with the supplier we did a whole lot of talking for almost five hours, and guess who was there in the meeting? We had the engineering head, quality head, Operation and design chief. Every one talked and we came to the conclusion that price cant be reduced since we had to import the bearing, which we used to wind the wires and this used to wear out every month due to increased weight of the spring wires and we had to change them often increasing the manufacturing cost.

I went back and told my boss I had a brainstorming session, and we came to the conclusion we could not do anything. He was silent for some time. Then he asked who were in the meeting. I told him all the heads who attended. The moment I said that, he said, “You are stupid.” He asked if there was anyone in the room who was an operator or anybody who deals with the machine at the ground level. I said no.

He told me to go back again talk to the grass root level operators. I went back the next day and had a meeting with the operations team, which included a person whose job was just to shift the bundle of steel wires to stores. I made sure he was part of the brainstorming session. He said since we have the winding machine placed on the ground and the drawn cold wire winds on the winder, all the load of the wires gets onto the bearing. He asked us why don’t we have the winding machine installed from the ceiling so the wire load does not fall on the bearing but instead fall on the winder? Finally we did have a solution: The bearing that was wearing out in a month gave three months life, which eventually decreased the cost.

I still interact with this person; he has been promoted from a store operator to a foreman in the company. That’s recognition and he is still in the company..

Conclusion of the Eight Steps

In summary, the eight steps for successful Six Sigma implementation starts with having a clear vision (which originates from a burning platform), which ensures organizational alignment, By ensuring we hire the right resources (by not paying peanuts) we will have an organization-wide QDNA which will transform the organization into a productive, synergistic, continuously improving organization.

Complete awareness at both the top and grass root level, prioritization and ownership, a proper measurement system, and governance will be key for Six Sigma project implementation. Finally to conclude we need to ensure that the team is empowered and recognized so that we do not end up with resignation and renegotiation. (Click on diagram to enlarge.)

taken from article Author: Lokesh R

The Office of Innovation

The Office of Innovation



Some things never cease to amaze. We are meeting with the executive committee of a major global company, and we have just asked if innovation is one of their top strategic priorities. Their unanimous answer is “yes.” We then ask about their individual responsibilities. “Which one of you is the CFO?” “Who is head of HR?” “Where’s the CIO?” One by one their hands go up. Yet, when we ask to see their global director of innovation, nobody raises a hand. Everyone just looks around the room with blank expressions. So, sure, this company understands that innovation is imperative. But nobody in its leadership team is directly responsible—or accountable—for making innovation happen across the organization. And in many instances, they don’t even seem to be aware of the paradox.
Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton made an astute observation to us after interviewing thousands of senior executives about corporate innovation. Their conclusion was this: “Of all the core functions of most companies, innovation seems to be managed with the least consistency and discipline.” Some pundits would argue that this makes sense. Innovation is, by definition, a creative process—a mysterious mix of happenstance, individual brilliance, and the occasional bolt of lightning. How could it possibly be managed? Business guru Tom Peters appears to share this distorted commonplace view; and not too long ago, he announced, “The ‘innovation process,’ is an oxymoronic phrase, believed only by morons with ox-like brains.”
We’d rather side with Peter Drucker who wrote way back in the 1980s about “the systematic practice of innovation” and argued that innovation is a discipline that can and should be managed like any other corporate function. It’s worrisome that today, more than two decades later, organizations still assign responsible people to every other core function except innovation. And then they wonder why they can’t seem to make innovation happen in a profitable and sustainable way.
Ask yourself, “How many ‘innovation managers’ do we currently have in our entire organization?” Perhaps your immediate response is to point to a department like research and development. The executives running this department are “innovation managers,” aren’t they? And what about the people in charge of other innovation units like incubators, new venture divisions, or Skunk Works? Surely these are “innovation managers.” At some level, you would most likely be right. However, confining innovation to these traditional structures is always counterproductive.
Innovation should be systemic
Putting innovation out on the periphery reinforces several erroneous and persistent views. One is that innovation is something that happens at the margins, not in the core business. Another is that innovation is the responsibility of a small cadre of experts, not something that should involve everyone in the company—and even people on the outside. Still another misconception is that innovation is mostly about new products and technologies, not about breakthroughs in cost structures, processes, services, customer experiences, management systems, competitive strategies, and business models.
Instead of trying to manage innovation by forcing it to reside in a disconnected “silo” or enclave, where it neither involves nor affects the rest of the organization, companies should be working to embed innovation as an “all the time, everywhere” capability that permeates the entire firm.
To make innovation a pervasive and corporatewide capability, innovation’s ownership must be broadened beyond conventional structures and spread throughout a company’s functions. This is exactly what happened to quality during the 1970s and 1980s when it ceased to be the exclusive responsibility of a specific department, and instead was distributed to every corner of the company. A similarly systemic infrastructure for innovation, which starts at the corporate level and infiltrates every part of the organization, is required. Such an infrastructure would make managers accountable at all levels for driving, facilitating, and embedding the innovation process into every nook and cranny of the culture.
Check your innovation infrastructure
Let’s go back to the executive committee meeting. When we ask which of the leaders is globally responsible for innovation in all its forms, we expect the chief executive officer (CEO) to say, “That’s me.” Building a deep, self-sustaining enterprise capability for innovation is something so vital to the firm’s destiny that it absolutely must be spearheaded by the CEO. We see this happening right now in several of the world’s biggest and best-known companies. Steve Jobs at Apple, Jeff Immelt at GE, Sam Palmisano at IBM, and Alan Lafley at Procter & Gamble are just a few examples. These leaders have clearly taken on the role of “chief innovation officer” at their respective firms.
What we’d next like to see is another hand being raised—this time by the chief operating officer (COO). We’d like that executive to tell us that he or she has been appointed as the chief architect of innovation embedding at the firm—responsible for making innovation happen from an operational perspective, just as the company succeeded in making quality happen. And we’d like him or her to proudly hold up an organizational chart that shows the company’s innovation infrastructure. We want to see a global vice president of innovation—an “innovation czar”—who reports directly to the CEO as the firm’s leading innovation practitioner.
We want to see an office of innovation and innovation council made up of the company’s top business unit leaders that manage innovation embedding and development across the organization. Beyond that, we want to see regional vice presidents of innovation who work with the respective regional heads in a visible and senior position.
In addition, there should be innovation boards in the regional as well as the business units, which are comprised of senior leaders who manage and advance the innovation process at local levels. Organizations should have hundreds of part-time “innovation mentors” along with dozens of full-time “innovation consultants” who have been thoroughly trained to coach and support would-be innovators and help push their ideas forward. These mentors and consultants would stoke the fires of innovation in the company’s divisions by actively monitoring and managing the pipeline process.

How innovation drives renewal
Having an innovation czar in any organization would be great. However, if a company fails to understand what innovation is all about, top-level leadership doesn’t matter.
“Innovation is the art of making an outcome easier to obtain,” says author, Robin Lawton. It is also the art of constantly asking what business the company is really in and who it is here to serve.
“Customers don’t buy products; they buy results,” said Peter Drucker. There is no reason to make a better, faster, cheaper product that should not be made at all. A friend of ours recently did a TV interview on this very topic that can be viewed here [1] under the videos section.
Strategic renewal is the act of dynamically adjusting business models and strategies to the deep changes at work in the external environment. Above all else, this requires innovation. In a 2003 article in Harvard Business Review titled, “The Quest for Resilience,” Gary Hamel wrote,“Strategic renewal is creative reconstruction.” It’s about taking a traditional business strategy and model apart and looking for imaginative ways to reconstruct it to create significant, new value for your customers and your company. This becomes all the more urgent during recessionary times, when customer needs and market conditions swiftly and dramatically change.
The innovation war room
How can you actually go about the task of strategic renewal? By setting up an innovation war room. This may well be a physical space, as in the case of Emerson Electric, the global technology and engineering leader, where former client and CEO Chuck Knight set aside a specific room, right next to his own office, for directing the company’s strategic renewal efforts. It was reminiscent of the cabinet war room in London used by Winston Churchill to direct military strategy during World War II.
Chuck Knight’s innovation war room was a simple but highly effective tool that forced all of Emerson’s people to focus on directing, innovating, and reinventing the business strategy and model to find bold new growth opportunities. Its effect on the company’s strategies—and ultimately, its performance—is still being felt in the organization’s business today. Even in the face of formidable pressures, Emerson announced record financial results for 2008 and 2009 and it continues to be one of the most reliably innovative “earning machines” in the U.S. economy.
Few companies can claim to have a specific innovation war room somewhere at headquarters. But what every company can and should do is organize a serious, high-level strategy forum to start rethinking and innovating its business model from the customer backward. One of the fundamental questions the company must ask is, “How do we get the sales curve moving upward in a market where customers are no longer buying?” Our response to that question would be identical to a slogan IBM is now using: “We need to stop selling what we have and start selling what they need!”
Sound like a daydream? Not to us. We’ve actually seen innovation infrastructures similar to this one in more companies than you might think. So when we ask you how many “innovation managers” you have in your own organization, this is the kind of innovation management we are talking about. Take a good look around your firm. Who exactly is in charge of managing innovation as a core corporate function?
Five components of strategic renewal
In some of our keynote speeches and strategy workshops, which we call “The Innovation War Room” and “Innovate Like Edison,” we teach companies to deconstruct their business strategies and models into five components: who they serve, what they provide, how they provide it, how they make money, and how they differentiate and sustain an advantage. We show them how to radically rethink each component using the “Four Lenses of Innovation,” a methodology outlined in our upcoming book The Office of Innovation.
We get the strategy teams to:
Challenge deeply held orthodoxies about who their customers are, how they interact with them, how they define their products or services, and how they configure the value chain
Harness emerging trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in their industries
Leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways to generate new business growth
Understand and address deep customer needs that are currently unmet

Summary
There are three ways to react to an economic crisis. One is to ignore it and hope the whole thing just blows over. (Good luck!) Another is to run around in a panic-induced, cost-cutting frenzy that could seriously impair your company’s long-term growth potential. The third and smartest way is to recognize the impending threat the economic crisis poses to your top and bottom lines, and quickly adapt your company’s business strategy and model to the new market conditions.
Is this what your organization is currently doing? Perhaps. But what if you’re struggling to radically rethink and reinvent what you do, and how you do it, as economic circumstances rapidly change? If so, ask yourself, “Does my firm have an office of innovation?” If not, isn’t it time your top leadership team appointed one, and fast?

Lean and inventory misconceptions

Lean and inventory misconceptions
April 10th, 2007 | By: Martin Arrand

I was interested to find an article in this month’s Logistics & Transport Focus headed “No more lean times: why inventory is not waste and warehouses add value”. The author, Steve Sordy, has chosen a title that is a kind of teasing of the more dogmatic of lean devotees – British culture has little patience for zealots of any stamp, and prefers to deal with them with dry irony.
Sordy makes some good points about value-adding activities that can occur in warehouses, such as late customisation, reformatting and returns processing. You could argue he muddies the waters a little by considering activities that could equally happen in stockless distribution centres, but overall it was a good summary.
Where I part company with the article is its assumptions – widely held misconceptions – about the role of inventory in lean supply chains.
Muda: the seven wastes
Inventory is indeed, as Sordy states, one of the seven forms of muda or waste identified by Toyota forty-odd years ago. Since Taichi Ohno and colleagues made that formulation, western popularisers such as Schonberger in the USA and Dan Jones in the UK have promulgated the idea that lean enterprises should be aiming for zero waste – and that means zero inventory. (Zero Inventories was for example the title of an early book on lean/JIT by Robert Hall in 1983.)
The New Romantics
But there is a difference between practical lean methods and “Romantic Lean”, that form of proselytising and sloganeering that is designed to win hearts and minds from the boardroom to the shop floor. Lean methods seem very counter-intuitive to people at all levels the first time they encounter them – reducing batch sizes for example, when there are long set-up times, or allowing machines and workers to idle if the downstream processes are blocked. So there is a need for this kind of advocacy. The danger is, of course, that people get confused by oversimplification.
Inventory in Pull systems
If there is a defining characteristic of lean production it is Pull. In manufacturing, pull means that production at any point is controlled by the status of the process downstream. The first and still most well-known way of doing this is Kanban.
In Kanban each process centre has a stock of material waiting to be worked on (a WIP queue). Each time a material is take from the queue, a Kanban card is sent to the upstream process authorising production. No process is allowed to start work on a job without a card. The number of cards are limited.
As the preceding description makes clear, holding inventory is actually an integral part of the lean pull process. Far from inventory being zero, it has become instituted in the system. In fact one of the ways of understanding pull is to think of it as a “make-to-stock” system, whereas push (e.g. traditional MRP) is a “make-to-order” system.
Furthermore, Little’s Law (Throughput = WIP / Cycle Time) shows that zero inventory really means zero throughput.
This means that lean manufacturing’s pull system leads to higher stock holding than push processes? No. In fact it leads to lower WIP and shorter cycle times, for reasons that are too complicated to explain here.
Don’t mention the “T” word
Sordy concludes that “only unnecessary inventory… is waste” and goes on to describe inventory holding decisions as “principally a series of trade-offs”. This is where the debate gets decidedly sticky.
It is true that it is important to understand the trade-offs, and it is true that only unnecessary inventory is waste. The problem is, what assumptions should we make when evaluating the trade-offs and what do we mean by unnecessary?
Sordy gives an example that inventory might be held because responsive manufacture “is an unaffordable option for many manufacturing processes that have significant changeover times”. The error in reasoning here is not the trade-off between stock and productivity, but that changeover times should be regarded as fixed. The lean view of batch inventory as waste leads us to reduce changeover times to change the terms of the trade-off. It was exactly this type of thinking that led Schonberger to ban the word “trade-off” (with unsuccessful results it must be said).
Behind the slogans of lean
Lean is not just about pull or Kanban. Neither is it about the seven wastes. As originally presented by Ohno, Shingo and Monden, it was in fact less of an overarching system than a general approach (an holistic view of the manufacturing process) together with a set of solutions to specific problems that had presented themselves over the years at Toyota. It was left to the consultancy and Business School synthesizers (the lean gurus) to give this the name “lean” and lend it some understandable shape (for example Womack and Jones’s five “Lean Principles”).
If you think about problems in a lean way (“lean thinking”?), it’s possible to see the trade-offs very differently. Little’s Law may mean we can’t attain zero inventory, but it also tells us that reducing cycle time and inventory together will maintain throughput – and reducing cycle time and inventory are both desirable outcomes, because they provide a more responsive service and lower costs.

Associate With Positive People

Associate With Positive PeopleBy Jeff Keller, Author of the best-seller Attitude is Everything

Have you ever heard the phrase, "We become part of what we are around?." Have you given much thought to how this principle has been molding and shaping your life? It's worth thinking about. The people you associate with have a profound affect on how you feel and what you'll ultimately achieve.I'm sure most of you have heard this principle before. Some of you have heard it a hundred times. But this is one of those areas where there is a large gap between theory and practice. In other words, you know it's important to limit involvement with negative people, yet you continue to hang around with them.By the way, I'm not talking about your relationship with your spouse or significant other. I'm referring to discretionary relationships, both at work and in your leisure hours

In today's literature, we frequently see the terms toxic people and nourishing people. As you might expect, toxic people are the ones who always dwell on the negative. The dictionary defines toxic as "poisonous" toxic people continually spew their verbal poison. In contrast, the dictionary definition of nourishing is "to nurture or promote the growth of." Nourishing people are positive and supportive. They lift your spirits and are a joy to be around.Negative people will always drag you down to their level. They hammer away at you with all of the things you can't do and all of the things that are impossible. They barrage you with gloomy statements about the lousy economy, the problems in their lives, the problems soon to be in your life, and the terrible prospects for the future. If you're lucky, they might even throw in a few words about their aches and pains and recent illnesses

After listening to toxic people, you feel listless, depressed and drained. Psychologist Jack Canfield describes them as "energy vampires" -- they suck all the positive energy out of you. One thing is certain: these "vampires" will wear you down and kill your dreams. On the other hand, how do you feel when you are around people who are positive, enthusiastic and supportive? I'll bet that you are encouraged and inspired. You start to pick up their attitude, and you feel as if you have added strength to vigorously pursue your own goals. If you had a choice, wouldn't you rather hang out with nourishing people? Well, in fact, you DO have a choice. It's up to you to determine who you spend your time with. If toxic people surround you in your daily life, you can do something about it

To begin with, develop friendships and associations with people who are positive and supportive. In addition, seek out people who are action-oriented and service-oriented. As you spend more and more time in the company of people who have these traits, you, too, will develop the same successful characteristics and put them to use in your life. Consider who you have been spending your time with. Examine your friendships and relationships at work and during your leisure hours. Those who occupy your time have a significant impact on your most priceless possession ... your mind! It is your responsibility to regulate what you allow into your mind
Here are some steps you can take to be more responsible in this area:

If you regularly have lunch with toxic people at work, stop it. You should be able to find a diplomatic way of extricating yourself from this "poisonous" group

If you have a toxic relative (which could be your mother, father, son or daughter), it is important to put some limits on your involvement with them. This does not mean that you abandon this relative and never speak to him or her. However, you should not go out of your way to call that person several times each day if he or she is going to put you down or fill the conversation with negative remarks

Form your own positive group with friends or colleagues. Make a commitment to meet with these people on a regular basis ( e.g., once a week or once a month) to discuss goals, exchange ideas and offer support. These should be people who accept you as you are and yet challenge you to be the best that you can be

In case you're wondering, I'm in favor of trying to help friends who are negative. I think we should make efforts to steer them in a more positive direction. But if we've been trying for the last 9 years and the person insists on being negative, maybe it's time to severely limit the amount of time we spend with that person - or to stop spending any time with that individual
As you increase your associations with nourishing people, you will feel better about yourself and about your ability to achieve your goals. You'll become a more positive, upbeat person - the kind of person others love to be around. I used to think that it was important to associate with positive people and to limit involvement with negative people. Now, I believe that it is essential if you want to be a high-achiever and a happy individual. By the way, as you continue to associate with positive people, the law of attraction starts to kick in. That law states that LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE. When you are positive, you'll attract more positive people into your life. Of course, if you are NEGATIVE, you'll attract negative people. So, surround yourself with positive, nourishing people - they will lift you up the ladder of success