Optimize before you maximize //
When asked what they need to improve their processes, some employees say: “We need to add more people!”. In fact that is one of the more common responses I hear when I facilitate improvement events.
Sure — having adequate staffing support is essential to getting a process to run well.
Lean is NOT about starving an operation of resources to the point it doesn’t function properly (but that’s a whole other rant!).
However, when you have a process that is not performing, don’t be too quick to add more people to it. And you don’t want to rely on the ‘add more people’ approach every time. That is a surefire recipe for wasting even more money, getting worse results, and creating confusion in your team members as well!
What we highly recommend is using Lean tools to get the process running well, to ensure it’s delivering the value that it’s suppose to be delivering. Then evaluate whether the correct amount of resources are being allocated to it.
In other words, you need to optimize before you maximize.
Book a call with us to learn more about how we can help you optimize the process before adding new resources to it!
(Link in the comments)
