Productivity

Productivity lies at the heart of business competitiveness. The challenge of low-cost competition must be met by leaner, more efficient and more effective production and administration processes.

As a nation, Britain's productivity is poor: we lag the other G7 countries by, on average, 13%, and the USA by 27%. (DTI publication 'Productivity in the UK 5', March 2004 )

Sherpa Consulting can help your business to become more productive and efficient. We will help you to assess your key business processes, identifying areas with potential for improvement, and will help you to plan and implement improvements. Our role is to guide the improvement process, teaching strategies and techniques which will help your business to solve not just its current problems, but those which you will encounter in the future.

There are many well known approaches to productivity improvement: Lean Production; Just-in-time (JIT); Business Process Re-engineering (BPR); Continuous Improvement (Kaizen); Theory of Constraints. These are often promoted as alternatives, but they share a common philosophy and differ more in detail than in substance. All stress the importance of quality produced (as opposed to quality delivered) and the need to minimise inventory.

Lean manufacturing, for example, can increase productivity by 25 - 40%, reduce space requirements by up to 50%, and reduce inventory by 60 - 70%. It will improve quality and reduce costs. Lean concepts may be applied effectively within both manufacturing and service environments.

Sherpa Consulting will help you to identify a route to improved productivity which is appropriate to your business. We can guide you as you implement your improvements, and specify any necessary changes to your information systems.