| 1. | Deliveries have been delayed lately. How can I speed up the work flow? |
| | Cost, quality and delivery; customers may ask for low cost and high quality, but they will respond most vocally about delivery delays. |
| 2. | How do I motivate employees to change? |
| | Motivations are subtle, and not always related to pay. |
| 3. | Information about business is not correct or is too slow. Is there some way to improve it? |
| | There have been issues with accuracy, timing, or completeness of information that you need to make key decisions. |
| 4. | Limited production capacity is a problem. What can I do to improve this situation? |
| | Capacity limits can be due to bottlenecks, layout issues, or many other embedded problems. Teasing out what the real problem is can be the most productive approach. |
| 5. | Lost product and/or materials are an issue. How do I keep better track of inventory and work-in-process? |
| | As workload increases, just keeping track of things can become a problem. Losing materials can have repercussions in cost, delivery, and even in quality. |
| 6. | Morale among employees is low. What can be done to help? |
| | Since your employees are from the same pool as other employers, a low morale situation is often caused by something in your environment. If is caused there, it can be fixed there as well. |
| 7. | Our many business processes do not mesh smoothly. What approach can I use to improve this? |
| | It is rare to have all processes mesh well. Since they often have different tactical goals, significant discord can develop over time. |
| 8. | Production costs are too high. What improvement techniques can I apply to lower costs? |
| | Cost pressures are common across all industries. Many costs are due to process problems, and there are many approaches to smooth out work processes. |
| 9. | Scrap rates are unsustainable. What can help reduce these losses? |
| | If you do not have a good measure of scrap rates and costs, you will be surprised at the impact. If you do have a good measure, let's see what changes can be made. |
| 10. | There are many improvement programs: Six Sigma, Lean, and so on. How do I decide which one(s) to invest limited resources? |
| | Out of the many approaches, you need to focus on the best ones. Do they compete, or do they combine? What is needed to start? |
| 11. | Workflow is too uneven; it runs in feast and famine cycles. How can I improve this? |
| | Uneven workflow creates other problems; staffing issues, capacity bottlenecks, cash flow issues, etc. These problems may appear intermittently, giving the appearance that whatever 'solution' is tried has succeeded. |
