Introduction In the current environment, a successful business must quickly respond and adapt to changing customer conditions and regulatory edicts in competitive industry-specific segments. Today this challenge is being tested with incessant customer demands for high quality, cost-effective, and customized mass-produced products and receptive supporting services. The Eight Disciplines (8Ds) Read more…
Introduction PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act) is an iterative four-phase analysis technique used to identify and support the continuous improvement of processes and products. PDCA helps businesses develop hypotheses about what needs to change, test, and implement in a constant feedback loop. The successful use of PDCA achieves a balance between the systems Read more…
Introduction In manufacturing, Gemba usually refers to the shop floor. In the business environment, Gemba represents the site of value creation within the organization’s core business processes and supporting activities. Gemba is now recognized and included in the management lexicon to describe the ‘workplace’ or the place where value is Read more…
Introduction The Challenge Workshop Approach (CWA) is a process used to quickly obtain consensus and approval on important corporate business and technology decisions. CWAs are highly structured and facilitated that bring together company (or customer) decision-makers and key stakeholders to improve decision quality and correctness in collapsed time frames. The Read more…
Introduction Six Sigma is a set of approaches, techniques, and tools to improve the capability of business processes. This increase in performance and decrease in process variation helps lead to defect reduction and improvement in profits, employee morale, and quality of products or services. A Six Sigma process is one Read more…
Introduction The Growth-Share Matrix s a strategic business analysis tool, created by Boston Consulting Group in 1970, and popularly known as BCG Matrix. The Matrix provides a structured and user-friendly platform for analyzing a company’s multiple business units or as the parent company, holding numerous businesses, to categorize and evaluate growth and Read more…
Introduction Benchmarking is a strategic approach of evaluating a set of customer-focused organizational processes, activities, and products/services, with other internal business units and externally with corporate entities in the same industry or in the broader marketplace. As a strategic management tool, benchmarking exercises provide the “why” and “how” behind an Read more…
Introduction One of the prime decision-points, facing start-ups and established business executives, is the creation of a strategy to successfully position their business products and services within an existing competitive industry! The best practice technique to determine the state of a targeted competitive environment is Porter’s Five Forces Framework. A Read more…
Introduction Technology professionals are evolving from traditional centralized IT activities into strategic roles, within focused business lines of business (LOB) structures, with direct technology-spend budget responsibilities. LOB is an organizational concept comprised of individual business units that support the creation, promotion, sales, and management of industry-centric industry sectors. Today, organizations Read more…
Introduction Kaizen is the Japanese word for “improvement,” and in business activities, Kaizen describes the structured analysis activities supporting continual workplace improvement that involve all employees. The goal of Kaizen is proactively improving work processes and operations to eliminate waste across all organizational boundaries without regard to silos commonly found Read more…