LEVERAGE and Great Processes

The concept of leverage is a very old one.

2,200 years ago, Archimedes of Syracuse said:

“Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Archimedes understood the power of leverage and how it is a potent force multiplier.

How might this concept of leverage help us build great processes? Let’s think about it from the Process Perspective.

Great Processes can be built in smart ways, ways that can snowball and compound over time.

These smart ways can be repeated and refined over time, providing a solid and real foundation for continuous improvement.

Ideas for gaining leverage when building great processes include:

• Create unique processes with substantial and durable advantages over the competitors’ processes. These custom-designed processes can be very robust and they can be hard or impossible for competitors to copy. These unique processes are usually protected with patents, which can be chained together over time to create an intellectual property “moat”.

• Ensure the equipment is truly serving the needs of the process. Do this in a rigorous and systematic way to optimize the process-equipment “marriage”. This work will minimize the number of times the equipment ends up being expensive “boat anchors”.

• Focus on root causes of problems, and drive improvement efforts upstream whenever possible. This will help to ensure that the causes of the problems are fixed rather than the symptoms. This approach will automatically build more robust processes with less “Band-Aids”.

• Make best use of the experience of your star Process Builders. Have them mentor others, generate best practices documents, provide process representation in equipment building efforts, and provide enthusiasm and role models for process building efforts by others.

• Manufacturability Assessment Tools. Manufacturability must be examined early and repeatedly and ruthlessly. Tools and templates can set the stage for this successful evaluation…with success criteria defined beforehand, to help counteract the role of emotion and enthusiasm.

• Understand business considerations and use them as leverage and motivation. How much is a percentage point of yield increase in an existing process worth? How much have your process efforts over the past 5 years contributed to the bottom-line? What process problems are causing the customers difficulty?...resolving these may create goodwill from the customer which is intangible but very valuable. Methodically factoring in these business considerations will enable you to answer the question “what have you done for me lately?” with confidence.

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My main learning from this line of thinking is that some approaches provide much more impact than others, and this is important to carefully consider. These activities with high impact tend to be useful because they generate some kind of leverage or advantage. Seasoned process builders gladly welcome any advantage they can employ to increase project velocity and reduce project risk.

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YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK

Consider your efforts over the past 5-10 years building new processes and improving existing processes…

• Have you used any of the ideas and methods discussed above? How have they worked for you? Can one of them be applied to a current project of interest?

• Brainstorm a bit and think about what other examples of leverage you can identify. Can one of these approaches be used on a current project or included in a best practices document?

What are your experiences with leverage and building great processes? I’d love to hear about your learning and insights. Please give us a call to compare notes and to see how we can help.

If you email me I’ll get back to you promptly, thanks.

All the Best,

Marty

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