Life coach - 78 of 100 - Enterprise wide improvement framework

I dedicate this series of blog to Jitender Pandit. Most of us remember is as a gentleman to the core. Need I say more.

I remember him from my degree days as a person who used to stay up at night making notes for the various lectures attended. He would willingly hand over his notes to all so that the rest of us could xerox (photocopy) them for our studies. I actually gave up making notes in the class after this. His notes were so detailed and clean that he could put a textbook to shame.

And once we had a bitter argument and he just maintained his cool throughout despite me blowing my cool. What a guy.

Enterprise wide improvement starts with the goal of being a LEAN ENTERPRISE.

The four goals of a Lean Enterprise are to improve quality, eliminate waste, reduce lead time and reduce total costs.

Quality: how well the customer needs are met

Waste: activities that consume resources, time, space but do not add value or are necessary to customer needs

Lead time: total time for completion of series of process steps

Costs: direct and indirect costs

Let me use a training battalion as an example of enterprise.

Quality: what is the level of trained recruits I am sending to the battalions. Are they physically fit, motivated, well drilled, do they know the skills of their trade corresponding to their level?

Waste: did I over train them (over training also has a cost), were there failures in the platoon who needed extra training (we have delayed platoons by 2 weeks due to poor drill), did we waste their training time in inventory (spending the entire day on firing range just to fire 8 rounds), recruits fracturing the legs and getting relegated. There are 7 types of waste - overproduction, waiting, transportation, inventory, over processing, motion and defects

Lead time: I took 2 years to train recruits before sending them to the battalions, can I reduce it. If I can do away with 3 years of NDA training and replace it with 1 year without compromising on the quality I can do a lot better in the balance 2 years

Costs: I am paying stipend to the recruit during his training, their is a cost involved with staff, food, indirect costs, etc

Let me take another example your intelligence officer. We needed maps for are area of responsibility. Maps available with us were not up to date.

I wanted a quality map which gave me travel directions to my primary and secondary AOR with all details - road width, culverts and their bearing capacity, road speed, number of traffic lights, police stations enroute, market areas, roads where civilian traffic would need be to stopped, bridges where my Kraz could get stuck below.

I wanted this map at the earliest before we went for our exercise, so that I could base my travel on this input and if needed improve it on return.

My needs is what the Intelligence Officer should exist for. If he cannot give me my map, he is not doing his job and his enterprise is not LEAN.