Twelve Cornerstone Tools for Streamlining

(Applied in the Following Order)

1. Bureaucracy elimination. Removing unnecessary administrative tasks, approvals, and paperwork.

2. Duplication elimination. Removing identical activities that are performed at different parts of the process.

3. Value-added assessment. Evaluating every activity in the business process to determine its contribution to meeting customer (internal and external) requirements. Real-value-added activities are the ones that the customer would pay you to do. For example, a customer is willing to pay for the meal served on an airline (real-value-added) but does not care whether you keep records on employees who are on vacation or who come in late.

4. Simplification. Reducing the complexity of the process.

5. Process cycle-time reduction. Determining ways to compress cycle time to meet or exceed customer expectations and minimize storage costs.

6. Error proofing. Making it difficult to do the activity incorrectly.

7. Upgrading. Making effective use of capital equipment and the working environment to improve overall performance.

8. Simple language. Reducing the complexity of the way we write and talk; making our documents easy to comprehend by all who use them.

9. Standardization. Selecting a single way of doing an activity and having all employees do the activity that way all the time.

10. Supplier partnerships. The output of a process is highly dependent on the quality of the inputs the process receives. The overall performance of any process improves when its suppliers' input improves.

11. Big picture improvement. This technique is used when the first 10 streamlining tools have not provided the desired results. It is designed to help the Process Improvement Team look for creative ways to drastically change the process.

12. Automation and/or mechanization. Applying tools, equipment, and computers to boring, routine activities to free up employees to do more creative activities.