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About Our Training Programs, Seminars, and Workshops

Ranging from content explanations to hands-on workshops, BAI programs are tailored to individual client requirements and can be one hour to several days. Although we may pick from different disciplines in the same program, descriptions of our most popular programs are provided as examples

TQM: The Next Process Is Your Customer

Workshop on The TQM Tools

Just-In-Time Techniques: Cycle Time Reduction

Process Reengineering: When Fixing the Process Isn't Enough

Study Mission to Japan

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TQM: The Next Process Is Your Customer	Total Quality Management is probably one of the most misunderstood subjects in North America today, and this lack of understanding often stalls our efforts to compete internationally. Many are beguiled by the semantics of the words, Total Quality, and think they mean doing things right all the time. How often do we hear or think, "If everyone else around here did their job as well as I do mine, we wouldn't have all these problems!" As a result, TQM becomes a strategy to get others to try harder, instead of a methodology for changing business systems to let people become more effective. Admittedly, TQM is a poor choice of words to describe this new technology of management. Organizations that use it as a technology are rapidly becoming more competitive, regardless of which country they are from. Unfortunately, too many fail to make the most profitable investment an organization can make because they do not understand the potential of TQM to improve management effectiveness. If you are curious about TQM or confused with the myriad of conflicting definitions you hear, this presentation will give you a comprehensive picture in a short time. Drawing from the works of internationally recognized experts (e.g. W. Edwards Deming, J.M. Juran, Kaoru Ishikawa, Genichi Taguchi, Philip Crosby, etc.), their ideas are explained with practical examples and entertaining personal experiences everyone will relate to. If you have been using TQM methodologies for some time and find they are an added burden rather than an incredible benefit, this brief overview will refocus your efforts and motivate your people to understand: Customer Satisfaction throughout the process to eliminate unnecessary work and focus on what is really important, TQM Tools to enhance Management Productivity and Decision Making: easier and far more effective than what many of us do today, The differences between normal and special cause variation in prescribing truly effective corrective action, The Real Economics of TQM: reducing headcount and other conventional "cost cutting" methodologies are no longer competitive. Suggested Audience Profile This presentation has been very well received by executive, middle management and related professionals in many countries. All disciplines, especially operating personnel, seem to enjoy the "why we might want to do it ourselves" approach. Examples are provided from several industries including service.	Top
Workshop on the TQM Tools	The Pareto Principle | Process Flows | Ishikawa Diagram | Trend Chart | Histograms | Process Control | Relationship of Variables These Seven Simple Tools are often the stumbling block which prevents many improvement efforts from getting underway. Sometimes ignored as too simple, these tools are incredibly powerful when used with groups. They are especially useful helping teams reach willing consensus as they provide agreeable rationales. Even when managers feel these tools can be useful on production lines, they often miss opportunities to take advantage of the tools in their management and administrative activities. Ironically, the tools can often provide even greater returns in the offices. If you're sick and tired of trial and error as a management system, or if you simply can't afford it anymore because your competitors seem to enjoy unfair advantages, these tools can help you find the right answers the first time!	Top
	The Pareto Principle - The Pareto Principle is useful for separating the vital few from the trivial many. The phenomenon commonly called the 80/20 Rule is a popular derivative. When we have so many problems, we don't know where to start, this tool is very helpful in prioritizing. Contents
	Process Flows - Have you ever tried finding a hotel in a strange city without a map? Although everyone seems to know how to create and use Process Flows, it is incredible how often we fail to take advantage of them. Contents
	Ishikawa Diagram - The only one of these tools invented in Japan and exported back to us, it helps identify causes to control rather than effects to hope for. This Fishbone is helpful for collecting and organizing group knowledge of potential causes. This tool is also called an Ishikawa Diagram after its developer. Contents
	Trend Chart - Perhaps the most familiar to many, the Run or Trend Chart is very popular with the media. It is used to show trends over time, both positive and negative. Particular attention should be paid to labeling, as this tool is often used to make people feel good about poor results. Contents
	Histograms - Often developed from Tally Sheets, Histograms can be most revealing where we thought we knew the answers. The profile is often used to determine the type of distribution (e.g. Normal, etc.) we are dealing with. Contents
	Process Control - Used to determine if a process is in control. It helps differentiate between machine or system caused problems and those resulting from external forces. This is particularly important for corrective action, as fixing the wrong thing is far too common. Contents
	Relationship of Variables - When we have no idea what causes what, this is a very inexpensive way to determine if there is a relationship of some sort between two variables. Many relationships have been discovered long before the technology to understand them became available. Contents
	Unless these tools are commonly used throughout your organization, you may not be managing as effectively or as competitively as you could be. Most of the examples in this workshop are administrative and/or management related to help you see just how much easier and more effective your efforts can become. The workshop is highly interactive and can include work sessions for each of the tools as time permits. It can be given in as little as three hours or it can be expanded to two days, depending on your requirements. Participants may not become proficient in all of these tools in just one afternoon. The use of control charts will probably require further study and practice. Even so, understanding the power of these simple devices will help you and your people begin using them and encourage further study where appropriate. Suggested Audience Profile This workshop has been well received by executive, middle management and related professionals in several countries. However, it can be adapted to any group. It is highly interactive, and examples are tailored to meet your business requirements and generate enthusiasm for further efforts.	Top
Just-In-Time Techniques: Cycle Time Reduction	Just-In-Time (JIT) is a concept which is sweeping organizations around the world. First pioneered by Henry Ford almost a century ago, the application of JIT principles is one of the reasons Japanese products can be produced so competitively. Interestingly, these concepts are not limited to manufacturing and are finding their way into financial and other service industry sectors. Although non-manufacturing companies have little interest in the reduced inventory JIT provides, the ancillary benefits of Cycle Time Reduction provide the draw. Time is money, and customers don't want to wait if they have an alternative. In every industry, leading competitors are scrambling to become preferred providers with these techniques. In traditional processes, managers typically assign work and push it through the process. How much work is already assigned may not even be a consideration in the decision to add more, and bottlenecks abound. The only way to get something through quickly is to give it special treatment (e.g. "I need this one right away!," etc.). JIT, on the other hand, pulls work that must be completed through the process in the order it is required. Work is assigned from the end of the process, rather than from the beginning. Pulling work through results in streamlined processes which enable each work item to enjoy a top priority at each step. The result is high throughput and low cycle times. In addition to reducing costs, this practice makes processes more reliable and predictable. Streamlined processes are much easier to control than their burdensome counterparts. It's easy to promise a customer without wondering which other customer will end up losing in the bargain. Some of the JIT concepts discussed include: Processing Size of One - Liberation at last! Quick Set Up - Simplify, simplify, simplify. No Mid-Process Rescheduling - How to get rid of this troublesome bear. Kanban - Talk about simplicity, and cheap too. Work Cells - Let's make believe we're small again. Producer / Customer Relationships - Adversarial means expensive. Non-Value-Added Activities (NVAA's) - The Japanese concentrate on reducing muri, muda, and mura. That is excess, waste, and unevenness in the flow of work. In our country, this has evolved to the elimination of NVAA's. JIT processes tend to yield higher levels of quality. The elimination of batches between work activities increases communications between functions. When something is wrong, the producer is immediately notified by the next process step performer, reducing the likelihood of repetitive errors. The ultimate objective of JIT techniques is to simplify processes so that work actually flows through them like water in a river. Demand pull eliminates bottlenecks. JIT is far more efficient, consuming less management effort and time, than trying to push work through traditional processes. The marketplace has shown a strong customer preference for JIT produced products and services in every segment. Suggested Audience Profile This workshop has been well received by executive, middle management and related professionals in several countries. It can be adapted to any group, however. It is highly interactive, and examples are tailored to meet your business requirements and generate enthusiasm for further efforts.	Top
Process Reengineering: When Fixing The Process Isn't Enough!	In the quest to improve performance, it is not unusual to find processes which are beyond hope. They are the ones which, if repaired to work flawlessly and produce good products and/or services 100% of the time, would still not be competitive. In such cases, it's time for new ones; repairing the existing processes is a waste of time. New ideas and technology are the major causes of outmoded processes. For example, 800 number calling services to people with computers have outmoded entire order administration departments. Instead of merely taking information to act on later, the entire transaction is completed during the phone call. The old "we'll get back to you in a few days" clerical folks are nearly extinct. Regardless of the industry, a single competitor switching to a better, faster, cheaper way will cause the others to follow or go out of business. Perhaps the most notorious of all improvement tools, Process Reengineering has been frequently used to minimize the consequences of or even repair the damage done by downsizing. These quick and dirty approaches seldom yield competitive results and are hardly ever profitable. To be effective, an organization must transform itself from a functional hierarchy to cross-functional, process management. Process management replaces department management, and decision making is done within the process. This often requires cultural transformation and building trust is essential. Automating poor processes can provide improvement in some dimensions, but it is expensive and uncompetitive. Performing non-value added activities, even at the speed of light, does not compare with not doing them at all. Redesigning processes to include only essential value adding activities and automating the resulting simplicity is far more effective. People who work within a process can be instrumental in its reengineering if they can learn new ways of thinking. Combining existing process knowledge with new methods can dramatically shorten the reengineering cycle time. However, people do not reengineer themselves out of work, and it's important to think through the probable consequences of any reengineering effort. As a result, client strategies and expectations are discussed beforehand to tailor seminar content to address these issues to everyone's satisfaction. Seminar topics typically include: The Case for Reengineering - Why bother? Cross-Functional Management vs. the Old Hierarchy - What's so different? Radical surgery or starting from scratch? - How to decide. Process Flowcharting - Practice on the old to make sure everyone's proficient to develop the new. New Technology - Getting the most from it - just automating the old process is not very competitive. A Generic Gameplan - Several options or the client's approach. The Natural Change Process - Managing change effectively. The Cultural Values - Building Trust and Valuing Collaboration - It's easy to talk about how someone else should change; it's much harder to lead by example. The People - What to do with those whose jobs disappear - Tough question, but the easy way out is seldom the most profitable. Hammer and Champy define Reengineering as "the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed." (Reengineering The Corporation, New York: Harper Business Books, 1993, Page 32). That's only the first part. Getting the new processes accepted and implemented can be far more difficult. Suggested Audience Profile This workshop has been well received by executive, middle management and related professionals in several countries. It can be adapted to any group, however. It is highly interactive, and examples are tailored to meet your business requirements and generate enthusiasm for further efforts.	Top
Study Mission to Japan: A picture of how some of the most competitive on earth do it.	Why are so many American manufacturers closing down US operations because they can no longer afford to manufacture here? At the same time, Japanese (and other foreign) companies are building factories here at an increasing rate. If they can afford to manufacture in our country, why can't we? Don't we at least have a home court advantage? In fact, manufacturing is not the only segment of our economy which is beleaguered by foreign competition. Twenty years ago, the largest banks in the world were American. Today, nine of the top ten (23 out of the top 50) are Japanese, and yes, they are continuously gaining, even in our country. Presently, only three US banks are in the top 50 (#'s 30, 41 & 50), and we wonder if Tokyo, rather than New York, has become the financial capital of the world. Why are some insurance companies processing claims overseas in countries like Ireland? Why are some airline tickets and many other reconciliation type processes done on Caribbean islands? Is it just the cost of labor that encourages administrative processing at remote sites which are logistically far less convenient to the market place? Could it be that there is another advantage besides the cost of labor that more competitive operations are pursuing? In the case of Japan, it is the most expensive place on earth! Real estate, raw materials and energy are far more expensive there. Their labor force is also higher paid than ours. There is little question that Japanese government strategies and education levels are powerful assets in international competition. Nonetheless, their management practices may, in fact, be their single, most powerful advantage! Many aspects of this system were developed in America and exported to Japan. These same practices are now enjoying a revival in our country among companies that are rapidly becoming world class competitors. More specifically, we will review: Some Japanese Cultural Traits - We provide background on our competition and address the often threatening cultural issues, so the methodology is not dismissed as Japanese. Management Aspects - Just how do they do it? Where do they spend their time? Management Paradigms - What are the key principles and beliefs that make them respond as they do? Some Results - What happens when they put it all together? Supplier Strategies - This is the scariest part. In many cases, American companies are sourcing key components to their foreign competitors! Recommendations - Yes, our government has a role, but it's not really up to them! These suggestions are all within our span of control! Suggested Audience Profile This presentation has been well received by executive, middle management, professionals, and hourly personnel in many industries and in several countries. It has kept groups of up to 500 people enthralled for three hours and more.	Top