Challenging the Status Quo

18 Feb Challenging the Status Quo

Posted at 09:10h in Articles by Rachel Bell

How often do you or your management team challenge the status quo to see if there is a better and smarter way to improve your work methods, to improve quality, safety, and to increase your profit?

There is an adage that states “If you look after the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves”.

This has certainly the case of a client who recently purchased and now owns a very progressive Hawkes Bay business. The owner has applied Lean Management and good accountancy principles to his business with incredible results in a very short time. As part of this improvement, he contracted us to write up a new Safe Operating Procedure (SOP) for a new router that was purchased to speed the processing of his products’ timber profiles.

The previous processing method was to hand chamfer the edge of the units by hand. After conducting a time and motion study, his thoughts were “there must be a better and smarter way”. After an evaluation with the input of his key staff, he identified that if a spindle moulder was installed, he would save 1,500 minutes per month. This might sound like a case of micro evaluation, but the outcome was incredible as well as the saving of time, the increase of quality and the financial returns.

By installing a $400.00 router, the business is now saving over 1,500 minutes or 25 hours per month. The equates to 300 hours per annum. When you multiply this by his business or burden cost of $95.00 per hour, the potential saving is potentially $28,000.00 per annum and all for taking and spending time to have a critical view of his production systems with the involvement of his employees.

Not a bad return on a total investment of $600 – $800!

My reason for bringing this to your attention is three-fold:

How often do you challenge the status quo to see if there is a better and smarter way to improve your work methods?
Have you considered using LEAN management principles in your business?
If you have and do, do you also identify the return as investment and payback?

What can your business learn from this?

Will you take action, or will you always do what you have always done to get what you have always got, while your opposition is making change for the better?

Have you considered the time and cost for the management of your personnel, health and safety, training and other compliance management issues? If your H&S and quality systems are managed in a paper-based process or are using a multi spreadsheet system, stop!