Overview

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

Robert Burns, To a Louse'

In Chapter 2 we said organizations could no longer regard themselves as being purely in manufacturing and hope to survive. The market first and foremost now demands quality of product and service. Any technological improvement is soon copied; thus the difference - the competitive edge - comes from service.

The aim of manufacturing is the creation of a product. Creation of a product occurs through the transformation of raw materials into a finished article. The transformation process uses resources of people, materials and capital (in the form of plant, machinery and buildings). The efficiency of the transformation process can be measured, in terms of units of output, quality of product, return on assets and so on. This measurement is dependent on the accurate and timely flow of information. So much is self-evident. For pure service industries, however, measurement is not always so obvious or easy. Much of the delivered service is measured in terms of customer perception.

Our concerns for any type of organization are two-fold: first, with the efficient use of resources and the elimination of activities that do not add value to the process, and second, with understanding and streamlining of external and internal flows of information.

Why 200 Questions?

The six pillars and their foundation stones with the 200 questions (see Appendix) are designed to show the way to efficiency in the total supply/value chain, the...