OPERATIONS AUDITING

The Auditor General of Canada recently exposed System Weaknesses in the intent to buy F35 jets. It reminds me that any company or organization should seek to have an Operations Audit done from time to time.

This is not a financial audit. An Operational Audit examines the organization and it's practices.
We need to identify our weaknesses as an organization before getting stronger - and - certainly Getting Stronger is our organizational aim.

So we examine those systems, those systemic weaknesses, and decide on repairs.
Repairs can be found from best practices and benchmarks like "The Toyota Way" and others.

Use good audit methodology and someone with plenty of experience.
Let your Managing Director, CEO, CFO or Corporate Planner lead this activity.

I can help you achieve this by training, advising and auditing.
mike@mma.ca
www.mma.ca

Small Business wants Management!

Good morning !! .. because last evening we learned hughely about Web 2.0 from Internet Guru Mr. Byron Biggs via a CEDEC.ca seminar. So I'm sitting down to write a timely BLOG, right now, about Small Business' interests in Management subjects.


Following 18 years in Top Management positions with Toyota manufacturing, I've devoted my latest 5 years to Small Businesses - - - to their Management issues/ systems/ approaches: from Strategic Planning to Goals, Actions, Follow-up and reflection .... all of that in an organized way which has a name: HOSHIN. Roughly translated, this Japanese Management system, Hoshin, means Steady Direction; through rough seas into calmer waters on the way to our destination. Hoshin has Dr. Deming's PDCA in its roots.

My observations about Small Businesses' Management: there are differences regarding their Management interest:

A. Businesses which have only one or two people deeply concerned about Management subjects are likely to enjoy one-on-one ad-hoc meetings rather than say weekly committee meetings.

B. Businesses which have 3, 4 or 5 people who are deeply concerned about Management subjects (such as 'Mission' et al; Goals; 'Process'; Structure and Organization; Roles and so on) enjoy larger meetings that last 2 hours or more and are regularly scheduled such as the Weekly Planning Meeting and the Monthly Review Meeting.

C. Both of these have a tendancy to Manage by the decided way that the CEO insists upon .. OR ALTERNATIVELY .. in some cases the CEO allows someone else, example the QA Manager or Finance Manager, to run the Management System.

D. My findings so far are that Small Businesses often change their Management Approach from year to year based on some new info they've learned and/or based on some requirement that a Large Customer may be imposing on them.. such as ISO-9000 or Lean Manufacturing(TPS) as 2 examples. So they change their style of managing, their management tools, meeting frequencies, etc.

E. I've also found that those Management Leaders in Small Businesse really and truly want to achieve Goals and to do so efficiently. They want it even though they have no time. Goals have been elusive in their Small Business. Achievement of Goals is lacking and leaders debate among themselves as to why. They know in their gut that a good, full-circle Management Approach must be part of what they all do.

What am I looking for?

I'm now seeking English-speaking Small Businesses in the Eastern Townships / Monteregie Regions of Quebec in order to study them and find the right HOSHIN solution for them that will overcome the issues which I've outlined above. The solution found would be given freely to the Business.

What can I offer?

Based upon my experience, http://www.mma.ca/ and my life-long dedication to Management Solutions, I believe that I can produce results - - - in a friendship manner, like I've done with all my clients and friends over 40 years.

Please check it out and move your business "through calmer waters to your intended destination" with HOSHIN. Go ahead and click on http://www.mma.ca/

Thank you for reading today and I hope I've left you with a picture in your mind that there is a really great Management System out there, Hoshin, mastered by Toyota, and it could simply be yours too.

Mike Davis mike@mma.ca

More on Mike at Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/MMAlean

Toyota guru helps a large enterprise.

How does a Toyota guru (i.e. Toyota manufacturing top executive) help a large enterprise to achieve its NEW goals?

1. First, a good dialogue over 2 days with the each of the enterprise's top 5 executives: on many subjects, a few of those subjects would include the 6 below:




2. Historically what are the Plans and achievements so far to date? How well is "Management By Objectives" (MBO) practiced over here?




3. What is the current level of understanding of (Dr.Deming's PDCA) Plan, Do, Check (and reflect), Act-Adjust? Reviews of progress are formal (written) or informal and at what frequency- weekly?, monthly?




4. Are all the 12 Corporate Base Elements being covered? Please see my earlier blog posts for QCDSMPTEFGIR. Q= Quality, C = Cost, D=Delivery, S=Safety, and so on.




5. How to describe "the culture of improvement" in this place(s).




6. What are the ''dynamics'', or driving forces, that exist to get new goals accomplished? Are these within the "culture" or the character of the leader?




7. What are the biggest roadblocks?




8. Secondly, the guru shall a) define their "management system" and present culture, and b) find THE NEW necessary amendment to that "management system".




9. This amendment takes the existing system and shoulders it with The Toyota Way (i.e. Lean Management Way).




10. A healthy understanding of this change is next. The 5 top executives wring out this change amongst themselves with the help of the guru.




11. Some questions amongst themselves will be "Are we prepared to make a change ourselves?" "How do we do this in bite-sized increments?" "Let's be sure we keep it simple!" "Which tools and techniques are we ready to deploy now?, and later?




12. Thirdly, a more widespread basic training begins for the Top Management levels. This can produce more fine tuning to the management system amendments as the guru and the Top-5 listen to the other executives and work to get it right for the entire enterprise.




13. Culture change will be evident and will need to be addressed as a major objective itself.




14. Fourthly, Plan the management system change implementation. Keep it simple!




15. Benefits: The Toyota Way management system gets objectives DONE.




16. More on that at http://www.mma.ca/

Thanks for reading,

Mike Davis; mike@mma.ca

Today's post promotes Dr.Deming's Management Cycle

PDCA is a fundamental base and principle of the Hoshin Planning & Control System. The PDCA Cycle is essentially a definer of what means "Management". Let me explain these 4 components:

P: --------------------------------------------------------------------
PLAN .. includes a number of things in the PDCA cycle:

• WHICH: The target area, say Quality, and it's subset of say 2 targets: Examples: Customer Rejects; Internal rejects.
• HOW MUCH: Each target's measurement basis and it's numbers: Example: PPM (bad parts per million good ones)
• WHY: = my target here is tied back to which major policy* of the company as a whole. (*policy- another discusion to come)
• REFLECTION: Analysis of how we ''managed'' last year; how did our PDCA go?
• 8-D: Analysis of the problem today (This can use Quality Control Analysis techniques/ tools)
• WHAT: This year's BOLD OBJECTIVE : target number(s) From 100 To 50 PPM
• HOW: Activities defined which we plan this year in order to succeed/ improve and meet the stated target. Say 2 or 3 and sometimes 5 or 6 activites. One of these may be very broad like acquire ISO/ AS9000 and such.
• WHO: will help me (I am the cross-functional leader). From which professional & functional disciplines.
• WHEN: the due date for completion of this particular stated activity and the frequency of PDCA follow-up/ formal review. (Project management techniques will aid this endeavour)

D: -------------------------------------------------------------------

DO .. means we get the activities and sub-activities and tasks etc etc done (via our cross-functional teams) within a short period of time before the next review.

• Mike's real experiences says review cycles should be monthly.

C: --------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHECK .. means that this is a control system. We check daily; and formally we review monthly.

• We measure the output and compare it to the plan (i.e. like a servo-mechanism or 'system')
• Post the today's numbers and compare to the target.
• Post the % done for each activity and compare to the % expected by this point in time.
• Evaluate our performance as good, so-so, poor
• Tip: use a circle: O for good, /// for so-so, X for poor, XX if even worse than last year !

A: ------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT .. (( may be better understood as ADJUST )) means that we take action to get back on target.

• First step here is we REFLECT deeply on how/ why etc we came up short.
• 8-D further analysis of the problem
• Decide next steps/ activities re-energized that will get us back on track.

Keep this cycle going for ever and ever amen.

OK that's it for me this morning,

Please post a comment and let me know your thoughts and such.

:) Mike Davis ex-Toyota subsidiary VP.