There are appropriate tools depending on your primary business objectives, so select the right toolset. Generally, tools of Lean are more effective in improving the on-time fundamental, whereas Six-Sigma tools are better for improving quality. A message here is to avoid overloading your people with a myriad of tools that they won’t use, or will use ineffectively.

Every improvement project must capture the views of disparate parts of the business. Generally, businesses are complex organisations meaning that no single person, department or function has a complete understanding of any cross-functional process. An end-to-end view is critical to ensuring effective change otherwise a change will almost certainly create problems in other parts of the business.

For sustainable change to happen, the people who must change their actions and behaviours must design the solution together. A core principle of implementing changes is to enable the ‘actors’ to influence the outcomes. Failure to do this will result in any changes being thrown out at a later stage as the organisation reverts to its previous state.