Standards are more than just about compliance and procedures, they should be at the heart of your business and its culture and taken seriously can often be differentiated that takes your business to the next level.

“If the process is right everything else will take care of itself” (An ex-boss)

My manager in a company I once worked for was an avid reader of books on management theories. He kept repeating the quote above to the rest of us for reasons that never became clear. What was clear though was that many processes in the company were right and generally poorly managed, so everything else took care of itself any which way it could. And when things went wrong we jumped to the conclusion that the processes were wrong rather than first looking at whether we actually used them as they were intended. Much time was wasted agonizing over process design and still no one paid any attention to their ownership and maintenance.

“If we train them, they will leave” – a well-recognised fear in many organisations. In fact, in most cases, they will stay and you get a great return on your training investment. However, if they do leave, that may not be such a bad thing. When someone leaves your organisation, it makes room for another member of staff to grow into the vacancy and perhaps for someone new to join your organisation. Furthermore, recruiters will now know that you are a company that invests in the development of its staff, which is great PR in return for which you begin to attract new and eager talent

Changeover reduction, also known as SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) is one of the great waste reducing tools in the Lean tool box.

Joseph Turnbull of WBS Group speaks about the process of implementing a Lean Business System.