BE RELENTLESS ABOUT CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND ELIMINATING WASTE. Regularly reevaluate how you work to find ways to improve and eliminate all types of waste. Don’t be satisfied with the status quo. “Because we’ve always done it that way” is not a reason. Use technology to improve our efficiency, competitiveness, quality, and safety.
One of the best aspects of being committed to continuous improvement is; the more we work on it, the more momentum we develop. A current example of this is the reduction we have seen over the past several years in the cost of “screws purchased”. This has been shared with the entire Field Team during the last several P & L reviews. This effort was initially led by the sourcing team and has spread to the entire Sales and Account Management teams. There are countless examples of what the team has done to drive our costs down and margin up. Successful ideas build on themselves, team members have worked together, new ideas and approaches have been generated, all in a concerted effort to get better. The year over year improvements we have seen have been driven by the team’s relentless commitment to getting better.
We believe in the advantages of using technology to help drive improvements throughout Field. Make sure to consider how we can better utilize the systems we have to work on continuous improvement projects. We know that we don’t completely utilize all of the capabilities of all of our current tool sets like P-21, Microsoft Office applications, etc. We must find ways to better utilize the systems we have to help drive improvement projects.
As with many of our Fieldamentals, the first step is to make a decision & commit to do it. Look at what you do every day and find a slightly better way to do it. Work with others on your team and find ways to eliminate waste, improve quality, and become more efficient. You and the others on your team know your job the best; this puts you in the best position to find improvements in the current business process. Take the lead and find a way to make things better!