I want it now and I want it cheap! Oh – and I don’t want to do any work for it.

When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around and communications these days, we more or less literally have it all at our fingertips and available to us just about anywhere.

We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no lineups for delays. We can book hotels, airlines and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options.

We live in a world where instant gratification is a reality in many aspects of our private lives.

Consumer electronics has transformed a great deal of business – basically, anything where there is a service or goods that a consumer might buy on their own, we can get it easily and immediately.

We’ve grown used to instant gratification in much [Read more…]

Welcome to the final blog in my 10-part series called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Ten:

Process Optimization

Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process.

Your people do their jobs through day to day implementation of those processes in order to deliver results.  If the processes are ill-conceived or inefficient things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be.

Well designed, efficient processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down and help to keep people motivated. [Read more…]