...the underlying principle is that improvements come from reexamining the details of how work is done, not just from cost controls of incentives.
It would be foolish to attempt to summarize the vast variety of methods and approaches that can be used to make improvements in cost and/or value. It is more useful to highlight the two main reasons this process stalls.
First, management may mistakenly believe that improvement is a "natural" process or that it can be accomplished by pressure or incentives alone. As Frank Gilbreth pointed out in 1909, bricklayers had been laying bricks for thousands of years with essentially no improvement in tools and technique. By carefully studying the process, Gilbreth was able to more than double productivity without increasing any one's workload. By moving the supply pallets of bricks and mortar to chest height, hundreds or thousands of separate lifting movements per day by each bricklayer were avoided. By using a movable scaffold, skilled masons did not have to waste time carrying bricks up ladders. By making sure that mortar was the right consistency, masons could set and level a brick with a simple press of the hand instead of the time-honored multiple taps with a trowel. Gilbreth's lesson, still fresh today, is that incentives alone are not enough. One must reexamine each aspect of product and process, casting aside the comfortable assumption that everyone knows what they are doing.
Today, this approach to information flaws and business processes is sometimes called "re engineering" or "business -process transformation." Whatever it is called, the underlying principle is that improvements come from reexamining the details of how work is done, not just from cost controls of incentives.
ACTION POINT: Reexamine the details of your product and process to make improvements.
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