best practice

Engaging staff in operational excellence – a case study on the visual workplace

Leave a Comment / Enhancing Team Effectiveness / By

Managing cargo shipments in the Port of Felixstowe I’ve been catching-up on my business reading.  I always find something fascinating when I do…. True to form, my efforts were quickly rewarded this morning, with a case study on digital signage at the Port of Felixstowe in the August 14th issue of Business Weekly. This article caught …

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Getting it right rather than ‘firefighting’…unless that’s your job!

5 Comments / Focusing on your customers, Project Management, Simplifying and streamlining what you do / By

By Elisabeth Goodman Being a ‘farmer’ not a ‘firefighter’ Some years ago when I was first learning about Lean and Six Sigma, a colleague shared an article he’d found comparing farmers and firefighters. People in organisations are often singled out when they have worked all hours to deal with a crisis, and yet the people …

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Team development, pre-requisites for success and temperature checks: tools for effective change management

8 Comments / Ensuring successful business change / By

By Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh This is the fourth in our series of blogs on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our recent publication in Business Information Review(1), and other publications and seminars in progress. In our first blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), …

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2nd Business Process Excellence for Pharmaceuticals, Biotech and Medical Devices (1 of 2)

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Business Process Excellence for Pharmaceuticals, Biotech and Medical Devices, The Brewery, London, April 2011 (1 of 2) John Riddell and Elisabeth Goodman, RiverRhee Consulting1 This was the second of IQPC’s specialist conferences on this theme, and as last time2, many of those questioned by the authors were finding it of real value for learning about …

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Intuition revisited – implications for process improvement and Lean Six Sigma (Part 2 of 3 blogs)

5 Comments / Simplifying and streamlining what you do / By

Intuition has an important role in process improvement In a previous blog “The problem with relying on intuition for process improvement and decision making” I emphasized the problems with, rather than the opportunities for intuition. However, as Gary Klein(1) points out, the analytical techniques practiced in Lean Six Sigma also have their shortcomings.  A point also …

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Communicating change – some practical procedural guidance

1 Comment / Ensuring successful business change / By

I’ve been on the look out for a good book on how to help teams develop their key messages for introducing change.  Whilst ‘Perfect Phrases for Communicating Change’ by Lawrence Polsky and Antoine Gershel1, does indeed have a rich array of phrases to use in different situations, it still did not quite help me with …

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Business Process Excellence in Pharma, Biotech and Medical Devices – April 2010 – Key Themes

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An integrated approach to Strategy, People, Process, Content and Technology is central to the success of business process improvement. Elisabeth Goodman, Owner and Principal Consultant, RiverRhee Consulting, opened the conference with the importance of these themes in achieving Business Process Excellence (BPE).  She also came back to them in a later presentation (http://slidesha.re/aVhZso) describing the role …

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Knowledge management and creativity / innovation – valuable adjuncts to project management. A case study

3 Comments / Optimising information and knowledge assets / By

Knowledge management and creativity/ innovation enhance project management. I am a firm believer in the value of knowledge management to enhance project management.  I also believe that the use of formal structures, such as those advocated in Lean and Six Sigma (or process improvement), and project management, give people more rather than less scope for …

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High performing organisations: interweaving process improvement, knowledge management and change management.

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Approaches for building strong quality foundations are well documented in the manufacturing industry, but also occur across all business sectors and types of organisation such as flight airlines, the navy, health services, pharmaceutical research & development and education systems. Steven Spear, in ‘Chasing the Rabbit’1 discusses, with examples from the above, how this quality foundation …

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Knowledge assets have been walking out of the door – is anyone taking note?

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When I was leading our knowledge management strategy development at SmithKline Beecham in 2000, and then, briefly, part of the team driving GlaxoSmithKline’s KM strategy in 2001, there was a lot of talk about conducting exit interviews to capture people’s knowledge before they walked out of the door. Reading Melissie Clemmons Rumizen’s very good and …

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