Recession-Proof Business
Step 1: Spring Cleaning
Any workplace collects clutter: unused forms, materials, equipment, etc. Borrowing from the principles of Lean Manufacturing, the first step is the five S’s: sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain the workplace. Go through every nook and cranny and sell or throw out anything that you no longer use or need, because it just takes up space and wastes time and energy. Then organize and label everything. Then put a procedure in pace to keep it clean and tidy. Even computer hard drives and servers can benefit from these five S’s.
Step 2: The Fast Eat the Slow
Spring cleaning will start to give you some idea about the existing workflow. Businesses grow and expand organically, but rarely in an organized fashion. A process that started simple may have become wildly complex, slow and error-prone. The gaps between steps in the process are killing productivity and creating too many opportunities for mistakes. The next step is to streamline the workflow.
Step 3: Optimize
Do you ever stop and check your order before leaving a fast food drive thru? Why? Experience has taught you restaurants make too many mistakes and you can’t afford to drive back. You’ve become an unpaid inspector in the fast food company’s workflow, just as your customers have become an unpaid inspector in yours.
What is the cost of billing adjustments, discount, rework, repeat repairs, and so on? What are the return and warrantee costs? How often does a service need to be repeated to satisfy a customer? Probably too often, In most companies, one employee out of every three is engaged in the “Fix-It-Factory,” correcting mistakes made by the other two. But don’t blame the people blame the process, because it lets the employee make the mistake
Step 4: Repeat
The good news is you can start today to simplify, streamline and optimize your business to make it recession proof. The bad news is you will never be done. Products change. Services change. Markets change and technology changes. There will always be something to simplify, streamline or optimize.
The economy will recover, but will you survive until then? These methods are easy to apply to start trimming the red ink without cutting corners or killing the cash cow. When the next downturn comes, as they always do, will you be recession proof?
By Jay Arthur, The Know Ware Man, jay@qimacros.com
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