Improving Operational Performance in Times of Recession

The current economic environment provides the best opportunity for your business to improve its operational processes.
Below are some practical short term recommendations to improve your business with a high return.

Connect with the numbers. Understand the breath and depth of your company’s profit and loss gaps. Get the numbers for your entire company and focus on each functional area. Shift your focus from projects to metrics that determine the cost of poor quality (COPQ). Identify systems and processes that would have an immediate revenue impact or that could minimize cost of poor quality.
Get Back to the Basics. Quality improvements and
cost reduction is all about methods, models, monitoring and measurement. Use
the right combination of these at the right times to track progress and for better decision-making.
Stay Progressive. No one can avoid these economic times. Focusing on improving processes can and will reduce the costs of doing business. This will allow management to position their company for long term success.
Improve Process Controls. Your products and their complexity should help define the level of detail that is necessary. Define and reduce the variability of your processes is to view and document your processes.
Focus on Your Customers. Make sure that your cost cutting measures does not have a negative impact on your products and services. Gather inputs from your customer so that you can still address their needs, while you are addressing the finances of the business. Remember, your customers are also feeling the pain of this economy. Supplier and customer relationships are so much more dependent in these times and you have to make the effort to show real value.
Pitch New Opportunities. Consider outsourcing or off-shoring that will yield to immediate cost savings within your company and in the succeeding six months. Organizations now are cutting costs by outsourcing everything from payroll, human resources, manufacturing and maintenance. Now is the time to join and leverage
your sources and abilities with industry organizations, local chambers of commerce, and what makes good business sense within your industry.

Source:
www.sustainingedge.com