You need to gain an understanding of the drivers that can make things happen. Why is that person or that subset of society reacting like that? What can we change ‘upstream’ to give us the results we want? How do we avoid ‘pushing water uphill’? Make sure that there is Read more…
The driver in Lean, the core about which the system is built, is Kaizen – a continuous improvement system where everyone in the company is involved in small teams, working on small changes. The systems various people/companies fixate upon, such as Just In Time, 5S, kanban, pull manufacture, poke yoke, Read more…
I have worked for or supplied most of the aerospace giants – Rolls Royce, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Boing, Airbus, Bombardier, MBDA, GKN Aerospace, Cobham, Zodiac, B/E Aerospace. I have worked for or supplied many of the key automotive companies – Toyota, Nissan, Vauxhall, Rover, JLR, the old AE Group, Johnson Controls; Read more…
Change or Transformation is a matter of vision allied to nuts & bolts. Too often organisations fail to understand their own operation, are unclear on what the bigger goal is, cannot see how to change the way they work, and end up changing the manager in the hope that the Read more…
Talk to your team, brief your staff and be open with them: They will feel involved. You start energising the potential in them. Their feedback can stop you making mistakes. You are starting to ‘lead’ rather than just ‘manage’. Institute regular briefing sessions which you lead yourself. How you communicate, Read more…
How you go about promoting change? Not the direction; not the structure; and not the drivers. Just the ‘how’. Number 1 is and whatever you do, you need to do it with energy and dynamism. In business, as in politics & life, people spend an awful long time prevaricating and Read more…
It’s late summer 2022; a recession is clearly looming; the seismic decision we took six years ago to abandon relations with our neighbours & biggest market will reverberate for decades; industrial confidence is volatile; and I have time on my hands to think. Here is an occasional series of observations Read more…