Examples of Success
Strategic Planning
Challenge: The business relied on a single revenue stream for 97% of its funding, with 70% coming from one customer. Profit margins were dangerously low at 1%, and impending rate cuts threatened the company’s viability.
Action: Designed and executed a strategic plan to diversify revenue streams, ensuring no single customer accounted for more than 30% of income.
Result: Transformed the business from being at risk of closure into a thriving, multi-million-dollar profit organization.
Team Engagement
Challenge: Corporate departments operated in silos, leading to poor communication and a culture of blame, which hindered problem-solving and overall company effectiveness.
Action: Established multi-departmental teams to collaboratively investigate and address root causes of issues, and implemented enhanced communication processes to foster transparency and alignment.
Result: Cross-functional teams worked cohesively, resulting in significantly improved customer and employee experiences through better collaboration and accountability. Employee stress was reduced, and turnover was cut by 80%.
Consistent Processes
Challenge: Several key operations relied heavily on specific staff members, creating a risk of operational standstill during absences. Newly trained staff performed processes inconsistently, leading to downstream issues.
Action: Documented best-known methods for all operations and implemented a robust cross-training program to ensure consistency and flexibility across the workforce.
Result: Enhanced quality and efficiency across all operations, enabling a 50% growth in business without requiring additional hires.
Quality Improvement
Challenge: Quality control relied on 100% inspections, resulting in over 6,000 defective parts per million being delivered to national customers.
Action: Developed and implemented a Process Control and Auditing system to replace the ineffective 100% inspection method, focusing on proactive quality management.
Result: Reduced quality staff from 14 to 3, achieved a remarkable improvement to fewer than 30 defective parts per million, and earned many national quality awards.
Corrective and Preventive Actions
Challenge: Company issues were primarily addressed through training and disciplinary actions, which failed to address underlying process inefficiencies and recurring problems.
Action: Introduced corrective and preventive action (CAPA) training and systems, emphasizing process improvement to tackle root causes effectively.
Result: Boosted efficiency by over 40%, reduced scrap by 20%, and lowered quality errors by 35%. Predictive measures also saved over $200,000 in equipment repair costs, ensuring sustainable operational improvements.
Construction Quotes & Timing
Challenge: Custom laboratory designs for universities frequently suffered from underbid quotes and missed lead times, impacting profitability and customer satisfaction.
Action: Personally created and implemented a comprehensive quoting tool and manufacturing planning system to streamline the construction process and ensure accuracy in project management.
Result: Successfully turned all laboratory projects profitable, maintained construction within 2% of budget, and achieved 100% on-time delivery.
Manufacturing Equipment Design
Challenge: A 20-minute setup time between runs created a significant bottleneck in the manufacturing process, limiting production capacity.
Action: Personally designed and implemented an innovative fixture that operators could easily use to streamline the setup process.
Result: Reduced setup times to under 2 minutes, resulting in a 200% increase in manufacturing capacity without requiring additional equipment or staff.
Outsourcing
Challenge: A small company relied on a team of three full-time IT staff to manage its website, software, in-house servers, 40 workstations, five administrative offices, and 25 state-wide remote locations, creating significant resource constraints.
Action: Engaged a state-wide IT service provider to manage all software and hardware, streamlining operations and reallocating resources effectively.
Result: Achieved lower operational costs, faster response times, reduced risk, scalability, and enhanced internal and external customer experiences.