Tips for Enhancing Your Business Management System’s Effectiveness

An Effective Management System: A Self-Reinforcing, Virtuous Circle

Every company, knowingly or not, operates with a business management system. It dictates how tasks are completed, regardless of necessity. On a spectrum from highly effective to dysfunctional, where does your company’s business management system stand?

At most organizations, there’s a lot of room for improvement. An effective Business Management System is an intentionally integrated set of management processes and tools that align the company strategy and annual objectives with daily actions, track performance, and trigger corrective actions. It empowers managers and employees to drive process improvements daily and supports sustained forward progress.

The benefits of an effective business management system include:

1. Clearly defined and understood performance metrics
2. Strategic objectives cascaded to all organizational levels
3. Cross-functional teams collaborating effectively on company-wide goals
4. Enhanced management and employee engagement
5. Accelerated achievement of top priority objectives.

To foster operational improvements and sustain forward progress at a rapidly growing food manufacturer, TBM helped implement a more structured management system. Here are the highlights.

Culturally, like many manufacturing operations, managers at the company’s two main facilities often resorted to “firefighting,” addressing symptoms rather than root causes, leading to recurring issues. Both food plants faced challenges with capacity utilization. With a maximum availability of 80% due to equipment cleaning requirements, they struggled to exceed 60%. Additionally, one plant grappled with ingredient waste.

In addressing these challenges, we also helped them:

• Strengthen their foundation for future improvements by re-emphasizing standard work and providing comprehensive training in problem-solving.
• Coached employees as they applied these tools to tackle top priority issues in their areas.
• TBM’s management system initiative included helping plants establish and report performance on SQDC boards (safety, quality, delivery, and cost), and track specific issues on separate hour-by-hour boards.
• We guided site leaders and area supervisors not only in using the boards but in engaging with team members about the issues presented on them.

Discussing employees’ ideas for addressing issues must be done constructively. Without this, engagement dwindles, and solutions cease to be offered. Initially, as with many companies, they struggled with the daily performance review component of an effective business management system. It demands a level of discipline unfamiliar to many managers. However, it eventually became integral to their daily operations and their progress on the organization’s improvement priorities.

Contact us if you wish to learn more about enhancing the effectiveness of your management system.