The 10th Annual IQPC Process Excellence Summit took place this week in London, and attendees discussed relevant issues to operational excellence, business improvement and innovation.
One of the most prestigious and important events on the business and process improvement calendar, the IQPC Process Excellence Summit in London this year celebrated it’s 10th birthday. Despite the current economic climate, both attendance and spirits were high, with representation from multiple sectors and industries and an over-riding feeling of optimism. There was, of course, a lot of talk around cost-cutting versus improving efficiencies and restructuring, whilst the emphasis was on profiting from the downturn through sustainable change and innovation.
Many presenters and exhibitors were upbeat about the recession, claiming it to be a prime opportunity to gain market share. Workshops by Catalyst Consulting and presentations by Rath&Strong dealt with the subject specifically and gave valuable insight into the best strategies. Innovation in both products and services was seen as key; however, the most important aspect – and probably the main theme of the conference – was engaging, committing and empowering the people, be they customers, employees or executives.
Time and again it was emphasised that in order for both the business and any improvement programme to survive and flourish, the focus must be primarily on the customer. Virtually every presentation and case study touched on the importance of customer centricity, along with the equally imperative need to engage employees and get the best out of them.
Some of the best presentations focused on these issues, and indeed it was the main theme in the inspiring keynote from Jim Lawless of Taming Tigers as he shared his experience and philosophy on getting the best out of oneself and one’s people. Sunita Bhagat of Pitney Bowes talked of the importance of creating behaviours conducive to change by utilising various methods, such as the Kubler Ross model, to go beyond acceptance to active promotion.
A more holistic vision was presented by Mike Sowden of First Direct, who explained how at First Direct they believe that their phenomenally high customer satisfaction ratings were due in no small part to creating a working environment based around values such as respect, passion, pride and fun. It is Mike’s belief that “people rise or sink to the standard they see around them”. Additionally, Mike spoke of the importance of designing processes for the customer, and not for the organisation.
Taking the people engagement topic one step further, Peter Koch de Gooreynd and Bjoern Reinke presented on how British Gas have successfully developed executive commitment and capability through an intensive three day training programme which applies real-time data from within the company to the tools to be learned, thus clearly demonstrating their worth.
From the many case studies that detailed successful improvement programmes, it was evident that hardly any were pure Six Sigma programmes. All of them utilised the methodology, but in every case it was in tandem with other toolsets – such as Lean – to create a more dynamic and wide-ranging Operational Excellence programme. One such example was that of the Lean Six sigma programme implemented by Kodak in Leeds. Presented by Dr Peter Blum, this programme was the subject of a case study previously published on improvementandinnovation.com
Another successful programme based around the integration of toolsets as well as new innovative methods is that of BP, a summary of which were presented by Paul Nestor. At BP, the adoption of a process ownership model for the most important processes is designed to align and coordinate process improvement; linking the strategy and agenda of the overall Fuels Value Chain.
Other hot topics included transferring knowledge throughout global companies, leadership and executive commitment, and whether it was better to have a centralised improvement team or for the improvement professionals to be seconded to and work directly with the individual departments or divisions.
In addition, there were several informative tool guide presentations, including an introduction to Minitab’s innovative new Quality Companion process improvement software, which compliments Minitab statistical software to provide essential “soft” tools such as process mapping, brainstorming and reporting.
