The first three steps of an emergency preparedness plan can be completed in one day. Once you have assessed your risks and determined the recovery steps, you will know what next steps are clearly justified.
Filed under: Operations, quality | Tagged: disaster, emergency preparedness, hazard, quarantine, recovery, risk, risk management | Leave a Comment »
Firms can benefit by integrating their planning, finance, risk, quality and HR planning and control systems.
Filed under: Finance, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: balanced scorecard, change management, compliance, control, feedback, goals, hedging, HR, improvement, IPO, kaizen, measures, objectives, opportunities, planning, process, regulation, risk management, strategy, TQM | Leave a Comment »
An integrated planning and control system must address many goals. Planning must prioritize, clarify, align, communicate and prepare. Reporting must deliver results while managing assets and risks.
Filed under: Finance, leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: alignment, assets, change management, control, controls, critical success factors, emergency preparedness, goals, improvements, insurance, internal controls, liabilities, planning, priorities, reporting, risk management, SOX | Leave a Comment »
Reverse logistics processes can be optimized using a few common sense rules.
Filed under: Operations, quality | Tagged: process, process flow, quality assurance, recovery, repairs, returns, reverse logistics, simplicity, testing, triage | Leave a Comment »
Quality improvement can be effectively guided by the use of a simple scale that focuses on cutting the number of errors in half in order to move to a higher quality level. Appropriate quality improvement techniques vary by quality level.
Filed under: Operations, quality | Tagged: errors, ISO, kaizen, manual. poke yoke, measures, process improvement, quality, quality improvement, standards, the goal, time between failure, visual, zero defects | Leave a Comment »
Indiana school districts will face funding deficits for the next 3 years. Identifying creative solutions today is the best answer.
Filed under: Progressive Center, public finance, public policy, quality, strategy | Tagged: administrators, benefits, bonds, class size, consolidation, fees, finances, funding, libraries, outsourcing, partners, priorities, schools, teachers assistants, technology, tenure, used, volunteers | Leave a Comment »
The rise of self-improving systems in biology, science, economics, national governance and quality processes provides hope for a future of unlimited possibilities. The absence of self-improving systems for culture, religion and international relations raises major concerns for the future.
Filed under: quality, strategy | Tagged: capitalism, ecological systems, enlightenment, feedback, future, general systems theory, process, quality, representative democracy, self-controlling, self-improving, self-preserving, thought leaders | Leave a Comment »
In the last two decades the Quality paradigm has come to complement the Financial paradigm, leading to a balanced scorecard approach to strategic planning with both financial and operations measures in the performance dashboard. Finance continues to emphasize costs and benefits while Quality focuses on the underlying processes. This combination approach is delivering more valuable results for most firms today.
Filed under: leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: balanced scorecard, both/and, cost of quality, dashboard, input-output, long-term, paradigm, process, quality, quantum leap, value added, variation | Leave a Comment »
The financial decision-making paradigm of evaluating marginal costs and benefits has been criticized for many reasons in the last few decades. After modifications to address those comments, it remains the leading approach to modern business decision-making.
Filed under: Finance, quality, strategy | Tagged: cash flow, decision-making, marginal benefits, marginal costs, paradigm, qualitative, rational, ROI, tools | Leave a Comment »
Firms face important structural decisions in determining what combination of mass, modular and custom production is financially and strategically appropriate for their business. Employing more than one production strategy requires firms to deeply understand the incremental costs and benefits.
Filed under: Finance, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: ABC, custom, discipline, marginal benefit, mass production, modular, pareto, production, strategy | Leave a Comment »
