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Best Practices and Articles

Select Collections by Name to View the Article Descriptions

All Articles are PDF files. which use Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. See the link at the bottom of the page to get the latest version.

Articles - Short Subjects This collection is a treasury of one-page articles covering a variety of business process improvement topics. Find here ideas you can immediately put to use to save time and money for you and your business or non-profit organization.

Examples of topics: how to write a business charter, information about process improvement programs, applying Six Sigma to small businesses, using creativity as your competitive advantage, goal setting and the importance of keeping business records.

Business Organization Practices This is a collection of one-page articles to help your business save time and money by improving its organization habits.

Meeting Best Practices Of all the activities performed by your busy organization, one stands out as the most wasteful or resources and creates the most frustration for your people: meetings!

Poorly run meetings can drain productivity. Become familiar with the characteristics of great meetings so you can make your meetings more valuable and more fun!

Featured Business Process Best Practices in this collection cover estimating the true cost of your meetings so you can determine for yourself whether they are worth the effort. Value is more than money: are your meetings doing what your business needs them to do? What do you expect from your meetings? How can you fix them easily and with minimal impact and personal pain?

Process Engineering Best Practices Every step you follow to reach a goal is called a "process". Some processes can just happen without fanfare or planning without a problem. However, other processes - the important ones - need to be done right the first time and every time.

This collection covers process engineering and Six Sigma topics geared to any organizations that chooses to operate in an efficient and effective manner.

Excerpts from 30 Success Stories

Risk Management Program Six Sigma Project

Problem: Need a risk management program for customer for risk management, tracking and historical archive.

Results: So well received by customer it has expanded across 18 contractor systems. All new installs must use risk plan. Now a standard work procedure. Several spin off projects. Reduced risks for Operations and Maintenance. Reduced downtime. Customer satisfaction; reviews show contractor exceeds customer’s expectations. Enhanced quality. Estimated cost avoidance of $3M. Expect benefits to expand over time.

Tools: Process Observation, Brainstorming, Flow Charts, Matrixes, Prioritization, Histograms, Teams, Database Data Collections and Monitoring, Knowledge Library and Standard Procedures.

WATCH THIS SPACE! This Could Be Your Competitor's Business Six Sigma Success Story

Problem: Typical business problems your competitor may resolve could be: 1) getting more hours out of a business day to get more things done, 2) improving employee start time rates and 3) adjusting to the seasonal nature of business and the impact of an unpredictable, variable income.

Results: The results of your competitor's business process improvement or problem solving project could be summarized here, including the one-time and recurring financial and non-financial benefits.

Tools: A tool is anything that helps get the job done.

Popular tools are brainstorming, diagraming and flow charts, standard work processes, modeling and cause and effect analysis.

Reduction of System Down Time Six Sigma Project

Problem: Aging mission critical system had maintenance issues and computer system down time that impacted the operational availability of the customer’s system. Unhappy users and government customers.

Results: Worked in partnership with the customer. On-going excellent working relationship with customer and other contractors. Decreased down time, improved customer goodwill and increased customer confidence in team performance.

Tools: Pareto Chart, Run Chart, Brainstorming, Histogram, Effective Meeting and Team Building Tools and Process Capability.

Eccl 3:1 "To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven."  KJV.