Posts Tagged "time saving"

Pareto – your productivity partner

May 2nd, 2011 admin

Pareto principle -what is it and how can you use it in your improvement actions?

Many of my clients often are overwhelmed with the size of tasks and data that is required when implementing a new system and it’s always in the back of my mind to bring things back to the Pareto Principle. So what is the Wikipedia definition?

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

 Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juan suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Wilfred Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients”.

So why does the pareto principle figure so prominently in productivity? Because it reduces time wasted on things that are not important or not important right now. Why spend time worrying about the 500 parts that need to be added to the system because we might get an order sometime, rather get right the ones that are being ordered constantly. Of course this needs some measurement to find the 80% ( or 20%) but most of the time gut feeling gets you to the same place.

 So next time you have a project keep in mind Signor Pareto and think can i break this down so I can get the bang for my buck quickly.

Till next post

Save some time…….and spend it doing something you love!

Tim

 

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Be a Productivity Scout – Be Prepared!

January 31st, 2011 admin

Be a Productivity Scout – Be Prepared !
I recently imported some goods from overseas and thought that most issues had been addressed in relation to unloading and storage of the goods. Upon arrival of the goods I realised how wrong in my assumption I was. The job of unloading and storage took many more times than estimated and if not for the generosity and good nature of those helping could have been a complete disaster.
How often does this happen in your business? When it does, how much time does it use up where you cant afford it and more importantly how much stress does it create which in turn takes your focus off critical tasks.
For a remedy,  just think back to when you were a kid and the Scouts were always banging on about BEING PREPARED.
Just take your planning and thinking process that one step further when you have a new project coming up and ask you and your staff the following:
* Do we have the right tools for the job on hand when the job needs doing?
* Do we have the right people for the job on hand when the job needs doing?
* Have we thought through together how the job needs to be done – remembering to check with each other and always asking “What do you think”
* Get someone to take pictures or do a video – see my last post.
These simple questions asked before the “Job” turns up can save valuable time and reduce stress. So…. next time you start a job/project think about the scouts and do your “BE PREPARED” analysis.
Save some time….and then spend it doing something you love
Tim
 

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5 Simple Steps to power productivity – Step 1

August 14th, 2010 admin

Hi All,

Since starting my productivity posts I am taking a little more notice of work environments and as I am on the road quite a bit I see many and varied offices that seem to be overlooked in the current improvement strategies that workshops and manufacturing businesses are undertaking. This is unfortunate as the “office” is where all the planning starts and the larger amount of staff the higher the opportunity to save time and money. Just think about the 3 estimators you may have , if you can save them 2 hours per week each , conservatively that’s about $11,000 per annum in wages or conversely the opportunity to organize/estimate/follow up on another 294 hours of jobs each year.

Dont forget that the brand new machine you may have needs to be fed and the quicker and more efficiently you can feed it , the greater the ROI (Return on Investment) !

So , for this post I want to focus on running a 5S program for the office. If you have not heard of 5S before this is a brief description form Wikipedia:

‘5S’ is the name of a workplace organization methodology that uses a list of five Japanese words which are seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke. Translated into English, they all start with the letter S and are:

Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, Sustain

The list describes how items are stored and how the new order is maintained. The decision making process usually comes from a dialogue about standardization which builds a clear understanding among employees of how work should be done. It also instills ownership of the process in each employee.

So the first S in the five is

Sort: Clear out unused or rarely used items from the work areas.

If you can , organize a sorting day or part thereof where all office staff, along with a manager do a walk around the office looking at everything asking the question; Whats this for , when was the last time we used it and , are we likely to use it again. This is a very deliberate process because I’m sure you all know that once you are familiar with your environment you can “overlook” certain things in your home and in the office  for years , they are just a fixture!

Use the sort process to throw out unwanted items , anything from old bits of steel used for measurement of a job 3 years ago to a stack of tender documents/drawings for a job you didn’t win !  While doing the rounds you can be tagging items with postits or moving  them into a specific place depending on how they are categorized. EG: Return to Material Rack or Tool drawer, Box up and store in 2008/09 archives, give back to the manager for him to decide on! The goal is to categorize and process.   Once you have done this take a break and reconvene next week for the 2nd “S”.

Be back in 7 days to discuss the second “S”

Save some time and spend it doing something you love!

Tim

 

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Cloud Magic

March 18th, 2010 admin

Recently I upgraded to an iphone and wanted to share how this has improved my general organizational productivity using an “App” called Evernote . You can download the app from itunes and I believe there are blackberry compatible versions as well, however it works really well on the iphone with the large screen.

So, why is it a productivity improver? Well , before using evernote I had been recording voice messages on the phone which were added to my Outlook file, then setting emails as tasks to be done , creating new tasks and trying to tie it all together using outlook and hoping it would all sync up with the iphone. This was very time consuming and difficult to manage. When you install evernote on the iphone you have a program that allows you to :

1. Type in a text note.

2. Take pictures using the iphone camera

3. Record voice messages

……..and then it saves all this input in the one place – your evernote account.

This shines when you are out of the office as you can record all actions, thoughts and pictures using the one application knowing that when you have a moment you can review it all in one place.

Your evernote account is not just accessable from your iphone, you can access it on the web from any computer and any changes made either on your iphone or while on the web application are all saved and synchronised. You can also run an application on your PC offline that will sync up once you are back with an internet connection. Using the PC based application is also a good backup if the evernote web server decided to implode, however unlikely this may be.

The application is a really good example of how cloud computing is becoming an inexpensive method of capturing and sharing information. Speaking of inexpensive did I mention that evernote is completely free, however there are charges for premium features that allow multiple access to accounts which would be useful for sales teams on the road or if you were running a project with a few people involved.

Some specific examples of what I have been doing with evernote are:

***Making voice notes while out and about then emailing to my admin assitant who can listen to the message and act.

***Taking photos of equipment while out on site and not having to download from the phone to my  desktop PC or Laptop and remember what folder I stored them in.

***Copy and pasting web sites , phone numbers, to do’s ,shopping lists etc into one action note that can be accessed in two button presses on my iphone.

Once you have got all this data sitting in your inbox , them you can sort through it without having to find 20 pieces of paper or go through a number of programs. As for sorting and prioritising all this info I will look at this in my next post where I share some thoughts on Getting Things Done.

Save some time, then spend it doing something you love!

Tim

 

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