A long time ago I remember Matt Beamer walked up to me and said something along the lines of "how is business doing" and I replied with "we have a ton of quotes in the hopper.  Things are great."  I didn't realize it at the time but he walked away and was completely confused.  Some months later he walked up again and said "You know, when you told me business was good because we had a lot of quotes I thought you were crazy.  Now I understand what you meant.  If we have lots of business today but not quotes then we have nothing coming in the future?"  It was almost a rhetorical question, but he was basically asking me to confirm this concept.  A Quote today is a sale tomorrow.

You know, from time to time I put my head down and I stop being a Visual Manufacturing consultant and I become a pretty boring old programmer.  When I pull my head up again it's 12 hours later, 3 am and there's 11 empty cans of Diet-Coke sitting on my desk.  I don't even remember getting up to get the cans of soda let alone sitting there for 12 hours.

This has been commented on.  My collegues call it "being in the zone."

Dave Horton put an article from Harvard Business review into my hand and that's what got me thinking about this subject.  It's an interesting paper you can download and read on the subject of process audits.  You can find it here [it's not free!].   

There is something about a Gap Audit that really drives some people nuts.  I honestly have no idea why but there it is.  Almost any time I suggest to a customer that a gap audit might be a good idea, they generally decline.  They still want my expert opinions mind you, but they don't want me to find out whether there's something they don't already know.  At least that's what I think it boils down to.

For a variety of reasons this makes my spider sense tingle me, but until I sit down and put my mind to thinking WHY, it's hard for me to put things into words.  So I decided to sit down recently and really think about it.

Everything old is new again

Once again I find myself blogging on our web site.  I (Robert Jolliffe that is) have been busy as a programmer/consultant for about the last six months.  Mr. Matt Beamer departed Creative in the late fall/early winter of 2008 and since that time I have been focused on the products which were left behind.  I have completed the redesign and reengineering of Shop Floor Toolkit, a collection of LEAN Inspired utilities and modules that were started by the programming team prior to my taking over, and have since been expanded, tested and incorporated into a more focused program.

Mr. Brazeau Departs

Well last week things changed again.  Mr. Robert Brazeau – whom many of you will know very well, has departed Creative.  I look at every challenge as an opportunity to improve, and I am very hopeful that this change can be turned into a positive advantage for the company.  We wish Robert all the best in his future endeavours, and turn our attention to making the most of the next few months.

Ms. Amy Chiduck

Welcome Amy Chiduck to the team.  Amy has been with Creative for several months now, but really has had a quiet position in the back room.  Some of you have heard from Amy on a variety of subjects and she will now be contacting you more often, and on many different subjects.  Amy will be checking in with customers from time to time performing customer service calls and reviewing the status of different items.  She’ll be helping all of us keep on top of things.  Amy will also be contacting many of you about our seminars, product offerings and various other marketing and sales opportunities that might come up.

Dave Horton

The venerable old man in the Visual Community, Dave started using Visual about a year before I did (which was about 16 years ago) which is about the earliest anyone in Ontario ever used Visual.  Dave has been a semi-official part of our team for some time but he joined around the beginning of the year in earnest. He is an Executive Consultant with extensive background in APICS (as he is always reminding me) and Visual.  You will gradually begin to see the mark Dave makes on the organization as a focus on education and process improvement trickles in.  We are extremely happy that he’s settling down finally.