Smash The Bottleneck

How To Improve Critical Process Efficiencies For Dramatically Increased Key Results

Raymond James Hodge

• Publisher: Ray Hodge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780994313812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Many of the current trade services companies (and other service based companies for that matter) are tested to the core as they experience growth. The technician completed their apprenticeship in learning the skills of the trade not on the running of a business. Things are manageable initially but as the incoming work increases so do the corresponding challenges. What once was a nice profitable and ordered business can become a dishevelled organization of chaos and debt.

Ray Hodge outlines in Smash The Bottleneck, clear and concise steps for bringing improvement to the process efficiencies within a business. Whether Trade Services or any other service based business, his booklet is a must read if you desire to streamline your processes and gain exceptional results.

Ray Hodge speaks and consults to businesses and organizations, a notable event being the Department of the Australian Prime Minister and Cabinet. His emphasis is on improving critical efficiencies to dramatically increase key results. He has coached and provided consulting services to leaders and teams for over 25 years.

1

Map Your Process

Aligning Business Process with Customer Expectations

Businesses reach varying degrees of chaos at different stages in their life. More often than not, this is the result of success. The combination of exceptional work, broadening of offerings, success in marketing initiatives and referrals from satisfied customers all flow with ease for periods of time. Customers are happy, employees content, cash flow is good and everything rolls along with little resistance. As this builds at the top end, incoming calls related to existing and new work increase, along with new opportunities to explore. This then creates the necessary administrative duties that come with that success.

With the increase of inputs comes a corresponding load on the business systems and processes. The outputs just can’t keep up. The incoming flow invariably builds up, creating a bottleneck effect. Figure 1.0 on the following page demonstrates this.

Fig.: 1.0 The Bottleneck Effects

Once the incoming flow builds to a certain volume, the effects generally tend to be:

• Lengthier turnaround times

• Slow response to incoming calls

• Cash flow becomes a cash trickle

• Growing piles of paperwork

• Disgruntled employees

• Increase in client complaints

You get the picture. The systems aren’t keeping up, resulting in the second stage being chaos. Here’s another way of looking at it.

Fig 1.1: The Log Jam Effect

The aim of this book is to identify the root causes that may be creating the bottleneck effect and then to create the key systems and processes to restore flow to the organization.

First Things First: Measure Current Results

At the start of any change process, it’s important to take some baseline measurements to define our starting place. When we focus on losing weight, our personal trainer will take initial measurements ( scary as that is). Along the way, they continue to check our current progress against the initial starting place. According to the data from their ongoing measurements they can make adjustments along the way. Company and organizational change management is no different.

What Do I Measure?

Every industry has its own key indicators and following are some standard areas that are worth measuring for trade service companies. Some are process related, others more general and this list is not exhaustive.

Financial – General	Defects / Errors / Reworks
Revenue	Client complaints
Cost of goods sold	Error #
Gross Profit	Rework hours
Expenses	Error cost
Net Profit	Market...

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• Title
• Copyright
• TableofContents
• About-the-Author
• Introduction
• Chapter1
• Chapter2
• Chapter3
• In-Conclusion
• Appendix