We all have them. By “we” I mean we process optimization consultants, and by “them” I mean our pithy and entertaining stories of how, with little more than a nudge, wink, or perceptive squint, we were able to double a client’s throughput while cutting their process cycle time and marginal costs in half, all the while reducing defects along the way.
My personal favorite entailed getting a client team to stop gumming up the works. It turned out they were getting their work done by misusing one of their company’s ERP modules, thereby polluting the ERP database. We had IT train them in the use of a different module instead — one that was designed to support the exact process they wanted. Problem solved, for not enough effort to even bother billing the client for our time.
The purpose of triumphant process stories like these is to instill a perception that we can find examples just like them in a client’s operations, slaying that client’s inefficiency dragons without even breathing hard — especially but not limited to the legendary “Anything not worth doing isn’t worth improving” opportunities.
