Making Business Changes Takes Proper Planning

Preparing to make a change, anywhere, whether it's at work or in the house should be planned out ahead of time in order to go smoothly.  You can’t simply throw yourself into a project, regardless of how small or how large without doing a good amount of planning.  Worst case scenario is that you start the project and can not complete it, leaving things unfinished and unusable for the foreseeable future. 

 When this happens, it puts stress on other things that you happen to be wanting to obtain.  For example, you need to do maintenance on a machine that is an essential part of your manufacturing process.  What are some of the things that you ought to be concerned with?  Well, to begin with, every hour that it is not in normal operation, it's costing you money in production and lost revenue.  How can you keep the downtime to a minimum? 

First, you'll want technicians which are qualified to work on the machine, but they should also have the needed tools and parts on hand to get rid of downtime.  The best way to do this is by having regularly scheduled maintenance instead of waiting for a problem to arise.  But every machine has certain parts that wear out and need to be replaced every so often, and these items should be on hand and any part that has a history of going bad, breaking through normal wear and tear, needs to be available.

 This is an inventory and maintenance issue, but if the two departments are working together and are on the same page, ordering and stocking the most significant parts, then this sort of problem can be avoided.    But the project can be streamlined if all of the details are worked out in advance, without the need for wasted labor and wasted time.  And really, the waste is what you're attempting to avoid.  Waste is the enemy of all processes, and you could find it in any department and in any application.

 The secret is to identify what you can easily identify and begin fixing the easy things first before you start tearing apart the big things.  Once you identify them, then it's time to start putting the plans in place to fix them.  Once the plans are in place, then it is time to double-check those plans to make sure that they will work according to the way they're written.