2nd and 3rd of December 2020 New Future Formula had a webinar with Professor Ander Drejer on the subject “Balancing Innovation and Continuous Business Improvement”

You can find presented slides and posters during the webinar on this link

Also hereby link to the recorded webinars:

• in English: https://youtu.be/fyaHd0yVSiE
• in Danish : https://youtu.be/XY64ly_zmrw

1st and 2nd of November 2020 New Future Formula had a webinar with Jacob Stabell,

Hereby link to the recorded webinars:

• in English: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5etruehdz90ttv/Jacob%20Stabell%20EN%20201030.mp4?dl=
• in Danish : https://www.dropbox.com/s/c79gk2dmx5in0om/Jacob%20Stabell%20DA%20201102.mp4?dl=0

Kære kunde, Kære netværk.  

2018 blev året hvor vi satte fokus på mødet mellem leverandør og kunde. Vi satte fokus på kundeloyalitet. Hvad handler det så om? Det handler i al enkelhed om at slå autopilot og smartphone fra, for at lytte til sin kunde. Det handler om at se hvad kunden gør i dag, vil i morgen - og drømmer om i fremtiden. Det handler om at forstå på tværs af alle grænser. Og så overraske positivt. For hvem vil ikke gerne høres, forstås og imødekommes?!

2018 blev året, hvor vi førte leverandører og kunder sammen i og uden for Europa for at give dem fælles aha-oplevelser, bedre løsninger og tættere relationer. Vi støttede leverandører og deres kunder i sammen at gennemføre 585 projekter. Mere end 1000 mennesker fra mere end 25 lande lyttede til hinanden, definerede fælles projekter og lykkes med at gøre drømmene til virkelighed i bølger af 100 dage. Heldigvis sjældent med tårer, men oftest med et lille smil, lidt sved, og en stor vilje. De bedste gjorde det fra nord til syd og fra øst til vest, på tværs af siloer, kulturer og normer og med dokumenteret effekt.

Tak til alle jer som besluttede at gøre “de gode ord og fine formler” til virkelighed sammen med os, jeres kollegaer, jeres leverandører og ikke mindst jeres kunder.  

Vi ønsker vore kunder og netværk med familier en god jul, en afslappende ferie og et godt nytår Et nytår der gerne må være fyldt med nye, sjove og lærerige fortsatte forbedringer, uanset hvor du er og hvad du gør.

Se vores julefilm her

Med venlig hilsen, New Future Formula

Sehr geehrter Kunde, sehr geehrtes Netzwerk.  

2018 wurde das Jahr, in dem wir die Interaktion von Lieferanten und Kunden hervorhoben. Wir hoben die Kundenloyalität hervor. Was bedeutet das? Es geht ganz einfach darum, den Autopiloten und das Smartphone abzuschalten, um seinem Kunden zuzuhören. Es geht darum, zu verstehen, was der Kunde heute tut, was er morgen tun möchte – und von was er in Zukunft träumt. Es geht für den Lieferanten darum, ein tiefes Verständnis zu bekommen. Und den Kunden dann positiv zu überraschten: denn wer möchte nicht gern, dass man ihn zuhört und ihn versteht und ihm entgegenkommt. 

2018 wurde das Jahr, in dem wir Lieferanten und Kunden innerhalb und außerhalb Europa zusammenführten, um ihnen gemeinsam neue Erkenntnisse, bessere Lösungen und engere Beziehungen zu einander beizubringen. Wir unterstützten Lieferanten und ihre Kunden bei der erfolgreichen Durchführung von 585 gemeinsamen Projekten. Über 1000 Menschen in über 25 Ländern hörten einander zu, definierten gemeinsame Projekte und verwirklichten ihre Träume in Wellen von 100 Tagen. Glücklicherweise selten unter Tränen, stattdessen meist mit einem kleinen Lächeln, etwas Schweiß und einem großen Willen. Die Besten taten dies unabhängig von Silos, Kulturen und Normen und mit dokumentiertem Effekt. 

Vielen Dank an alle, die sich dafür entschieden, „die guten Wörter und schönen Formeln“ gemeinsam mit uns, Ihren Kollegen, Ihren Lieferanten und nicht zuletzt Ihren Kunden zu verwirklichen.  

Wir wünschen unseren Kunden und unserem Netzwerk mit Familien frohe Weihnachten, einen erholsamen Urlaub und ein gutes neues Jahr. Ein neues Jahr, von dem wir hoffen, dass es voller neuer, vergnüglicher und lehrreicher laufender Verbesserungen sein wird, egal wo Sie sind oder was Sie tun.

Watch our Christmas Video here

Mit freundlichen Grüßen, New Futura Formula

Drogi kliencie, droga sieć.  

 Rok 2018 był rokiem, w którym skupiliśmy się na spotkaniu między dostawcą a klientem. Skoncentrowaliśmy się na lojalności klientów. O co chodzi? W uproszczeniu chodzi o wyłączanie autopilota i smartfona, aby wysłuchać klienta. Chodzi o to, aby zobaczyć, co klient robi dzisiaj, jutro - i o czym będzie marzył w przyszłości. Chodzi o zrozumienie wzdłuż wszystkich granic. I potem pozytywnie zaskoczyć. Bo kto nie chce być słyszany, rozumiany i rozpoznany?

 Rok 2018 był rokiem, w którym wprowadziliśmy dostawców i klientów w Europie i poza nią, aby dać im wspólne doświadczenia, lepsze rozwiązania i bliższe relacje. Wsparliśmy dostawców i ich klientów, aby zrealizować 585 projektów. Ponad 1.000 osób z ponad 25 krajów słuchało się nawzajem, definiowało wspólne projekty i udało się spełnić marzenia w terminach 100-dniowych. Na szczęście rzadko ze łzami, zwykle z małym uśmiechem, małym potem i dużą wolą. Najlepiej zrobili to z północy na południe i ze wschodu na zachód, poprzez silosy, kultury i normy oraz ze sprawdzonym skutkiem.

 Dziękuję wszystkim, którzy zdecydowali się na "dobre słowa i dobre formuły" w prawdziwym życiu z nami, współpracownikami, dostawcami oraz z klientami.  

 Życzymy naszym klientom, znajomym i rodzinom Wesołych Świąt, relaksującego urlopu i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku - nowego roku, w którym mamy nadzieje będzie wypełniony nowymi, zabawnymi i edukacyjnymi ciągłymi ulepszeniami, gdziekolwiek jesteś i czymkolwiek się zajmujesz.

Watch our Christmas Video here

 Pozdrawiam, New Future Formula

Dear client – Dear network:  

2018 – this was the year when we highlighted the interconnection between supplier and customer. We highlighted customer loyalty – which means what? It is about deactivating the autopilot and the smartphone and it is about listening to your customer. It’s about understanding what your customer wants today, tomorrow – and dreams about for the future. It is about understanding all of this across all borders, and then surprise your customer in a positive way, because who does not want to be heard, understood and met?

2018 – this was the year when we brought together suppliers and customers inside and outside of Europe   to lead them to new insight, better solutions and closer relationships. We supported suppliers and their customers in their joint efforts to carry through a total of 585 projects. More than 1 000 people in more than 25 countries listened to each other, defined joint projects and managed to make their dreams come true in waves of 100 days. Fortunately, only on the rare occasion in tears and usually with a modest smile, a little sweat and a good deal of determination. The best ones did it across silos, cultures and norms and with a documented effect.

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all of you who decided to make “the fine words and advanced formulas” come true together with us, your colleagues, your suppliers and not least your customers.  

We wish our clients and our network and all of your families a Merry Christmas, a relaxing holiday season and a Happy New Year. A new year we hope will be full of new, fun and educational continued improvements for you – no matter where you are and what you do.

Watch our Christmas Video here

Best regards, New Future Formula

Read this article in Danish, Polish or German

Undoubtedly, as a truck manufacturer the all-time winner has been Scania during recent decades. Time and again, Scania has taken the lead when it comes to customer perception, low fault registration during the guarantee period and positive market share progress. 
 
The why and how were the focal points when the senior management team from DOVISTA Polska paid a memorable visit to Scania’s global headquarters in Sweden.
 
This is a brief account of an excursion to Södertälje, where Scania rarely opens its doors to outsiders.   
 
 
DOVISTA Polska produces windows and doors for leading brands such as VELFAC and Rational, and its seven factories in Poland now count a total of 2 500 employees. For a number of years, the company has boasted steady growth figures to the benefit of customers, staff and the local community. One of the contributing factors to the success is the producer’s own Future Excellence programme, the name DOVISTA has chosen to use for its in-house Lean and Continuous Business Improvement (CBI) programme. 
 
Despite its success, DOVISTA Polska has retained its humble and ambitious attitude. Although things are progressing well they do realize that there is still plenty to do. They are also prepared to make the necessary investments – and not least prepared to develop leadership skills and the organization to go with it. 
 
In order to test objectives and plans and in a quest for inspiration, the company's top brass travelled to Södertälje in Sweden, where the truck manufacturer Scania has been headquartered since 1912. 
 
The 3-day excursion from 2 to 4 October 2017 was the result of months of preparations. From early on, the CEO of DOVISTA Polska, Mr Wojciech Baszkowski, insisted that if we were granted the opportunity to take a closer look at the engine room of one of the world's leading manufacturers within Lean CBI, we should come carefully prepared.  
 
Management spent all of the first day of the excursion, 2 October, brushing up its preparations for the actual visit the following day, 3 October. The twelve factory managers and top executives from DOVISTA Polska prepared themselves looking at specific ‘World Class’ examples, discussing the literature they had studied and analysing DOVISTA’s objectives and plans moving forward. All attendants also put the final touches to a list of questions for Scania. By the end of the day, everybody knew what they had come for, what they could expect and what they should strive to learn. 
 
On the day of the visit, 3 October, Kees Luttik, global head of Scania Production Systems, gave us a warm welcome. In Södertälje south of Stockholm, Scania counts a total of  14 000 members of staff – and globally slightly in excess of 40 000 staff members.

3 October, morning: Visit to Scania. From the left: Kees Luttik, Jacek Lach, Tadeusz Gurzynski, Dagmara Gutowska, Lukasz Kriesel, Marek Laski,Wojciech Baszkowski, Piotr Jankie, Krzysztof Iwanski, Grzegorz Grabowski, Justyna Kowalska-Teclaw, Marcin Stawarz, Krystian Frankowski, Mariusz Filarski.    

There are most likely multiple reasons why Scania is the truck industry winner. 
One of these is probably the carefully designed modularization concept which the company has been using and constantly polishing for 50 years. Especially during the past two decades, the Scania way has served as a source of inspiration to industrialists all over the planet. One more reason is Scania’s lean journey which has been unique on several counts. 
 
In 1996 they decided to embark on a lasting journey of continuous improvements.
They knew that 85 per cent of all lean journeys fail – and they wanted to be counted among the successful 15 per cent. Pointing to a single reason for the success is of course difficult if not downright impossible; however, one particular concept springs to mind, although this is not even remotely related to industry: Believe. Believe in continuous, positive involvement of every single employee through the constant changes of every single process leads to increasingly happy staff members, customers and owners. Believe that as the results have materialized on a massive scale has gradually transformed into certain knowledge that it works and is effective. This has created an active and positively infectious lean and CBI culture. Today, the believe, knowledge and culture have found a formalized home in the form of the ‘Scania Production System’ which embraces the entire organization. 
 
With believe as the focal point, tools, systems and tables take the back seat at Scania. They become mere tools for the individual and its efforts. Every day each and every individual asks why things are done in a specific manner – how they can be delivered in a more stable, more standardized and eventually better and faster manner for the internal customer. This knits together a very powerful culture and structure which eventually lives up to the expectations of the external end customer.    
 
Much can be written and told about Scania’s impressive improvement journey but it would only convey a meagre image of the actual experience. Scania Södertälje is quite simply World Class alive and kicking and is more dedicated to human beings, actions and results than eye catching PowerPoint slides, ear catching toasts and amazing tools. No 5S forms – although the workshop seems as clean as a hospital. No signs of being in a rush – and yet the stroke is constant and the speed obviously high. Not many visible QA guys – and yet the quality is quite obviously top-notch thanks to the internal customer concept, Statistical Process Control (SPC) and operator self-control. Stringency and friendliness go hand in hand everywhere.   

3 October: Luttik Kees explains the Scania Production System at the Scania Museum in the Marcus Wallenberg Hall.

I could go on and on but have to stop at some point – and this is the Scania Academy. This is where go-karts are designed, assembled only to be disassembled in an ever-lasting process. All new employees get the Scania culture under their skin through games, simulation and hands-on training. In a sophisticated and elegant manner, everybody learns about the ‘Scania Production System’ before being let loose in the company for real. They are not taught using cold-hearted PowerPoint shows but by working with the processes, acquiring their own experiences and reflecting in a miniature environment that mirrors the work life and unique organization they are about to become part of. 
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for an unforgettable and educational day at Scania to Khabout Jamil, Arkan Mekhael Maikel, Maria Muammar and Kees Luttik. 
 
The third day of the excursion was spent systematically transforming the many learnings and insights into specific objectives and plans. As a result of this, each of the factory managers signed personal contracts with the following headings: Personal Development Plan, Development of Own Core Team and Development of Own Organization. Kees Luttik looked in on us around lunch to listen to the reflections and decisions of every single attendant. Using a group process approach in the afternoon, CEO Wojciech Baszkowski, COO Grzegorz Grabowski and HR Director Krzysztof Iwanski gathered up the threads to ensure that the executive management will support, enhance and coordinate the most important objectives, plans and deadlines in various ways.   Bursting with inspiration, faith and energy, DOVISTA Polska is now transforming experiences into plans and actions – to the benefit of customers, staff members and the future of the company. 

3 October, evening. Evaluation. DOVISTA Polska reflects on insights and transform the insights into plans and actions.  

Through the last year BSB-Industry Poland have put lot of efforts into improving their planning capabilities. A Visual, smart and simple production planning system has been designed and deployed on the shop floor. In parallel a new Navision system is in process of being implemented. New Future Formula senior consultant Chris Russell has proudly taken part in the journey.

Sometimes when you work and struggle hard with something it is worth visiting somebody else that has experienced the same challenges - and succeeded. Thereby you get enforcement of what you do right, adjustment on where you difficulties are and inspiration for next steps. Therefore BSB Poland visited LUVATA Pori Finland the 23rd of August.

LUVATA Pori Finland produce super conductors, and have worked with the planning process for years and have thereby been able reduce throughput time with 75% since 2008.

We met many kind and fine persons on “LUVATA Pori Finland”. They presented with understandable pride what they have achieved through the years. As intended the focus was on production planning. We saw several impressive box systems in the factory. We also saw how it fitted to the IT set-up. Many notes and ideas were taken and the insight are probably already in implementation in BSB Poland.

On behalf of BSB-Poland and New Future Formula, again thanks to LUVATA Pori for opening your doors and our minds.

Our hosts at LUVATA Pori were: Alejandro Tassara, LPS Office, Jari Heikkila, Senior LPS Navigator Pori, Rick Hainirihar, LPS Office, Ben Karlemo, Head of Superconductors Business Unit, Carita Laine, LPS Navigator, Mikael Holm, Production Manager, Ida Myllyharju, Supply Chain Specialist, Samuli Sinerva, LPS Navigator.

From BSB following persons participated: Axel Elneff, production manager, BSB, Karol Bania, production manager, BSB, Marek Piwowarski, production manager, BSB, Sebastian Nurkowski, production planning, BSB and Christian Møller, production coordination, BSB, Andrzej Cywinski,BSB

New Future Formula was invited to visit Prague on 8 June 2017 by the Czech Association for Business Excellence. We met with leading business people who not only listened attentively to our presentation of the CBI principles but also – with a smile – launched themselves into the morning’s challenging exercises. This is a brief account of our experiences.

New Future Formula are building bridges across Europe with CBI - with a smile.

The Charles Bridge can be found to the left and the headquarters of the Czech Association for Quality and Business Excellence to the right.

One morning in early June, Ellen, Peter and I were enjoying the sun as we made our way through the city centre of Prague. More specifically it was 8 June 2017 and we walked from Hotel Kampa with its homey feel of bygone days across Charles Bridge. Just a few metres after the bridge, we entered the headquarters of the Czech Society for Quality and Excellence and its training facilities. In one of the oldest buildings in Prague, the top brass of some of the leading companies in the Czech Republic were awaiting our arrival with hopeful anticipation. Thanks to our multiple visits to Prague over the past 12 months, it was a moment of happy reunion. These sessions have given us nothing but pleasure since we are always embraced by curiosity and good energy. This was also the case on 8 June. As we reported in an autumn newsletter, the work taking place in the Czech Republic these years is a scholarly example of how to benefit from Excellence – efforts that involve the country's top management level, with the President and the Prime Minister at the helm.


For this June session, New Future Formula had been invited by Klára Fousková, Executive Director and Development Manager of the Center for Excellence, to introduce business managers to CBI – Continuous Business Improvement. Klára Fousková’s efforts to organize the event are highly appreciated – including arranging for an impressive room with an interested audience, tasty coffee and Czech delights.

Managing Director Petr Koten opened the session with a warm welcome to everybody. We immediately set about covering the walls with illustrative posters – and soon we could feel the good vibes mediated by a brief "encounter exercise”.

And then things really took off.

Through examples, business cases and a recurrent exercise involving a ball, we demonstrated how CBI constantly generates process improvements and better results in an active organization.

A ball exercise served to let the participants live and deliver CBI in practice. Four rounds of good teamwork and dedicated process optimization resulted in an almost 80% reduction of the through-put time as well as smiles, recognitions and improvements. See for yourself from the photos below.

The morning was rounded off with a Q&A session. The many wise questions and interesting comments were evidence of a group of highly qualified participants.

One question we would like to share is, “The CBI principle – it’s scope goes beyond production processes? In our experience, CBI is relevant for every single core process of a company. In fact, the largest potential is often to be harvested outside of the production environment; within R&D, procurement, sales, logistics, service – and across these functions.

Ellen G. Andersen rounded of with the conclusion that CBI builds bridges between three widely differing demands; 1) the demand for specific and easily digestible improvements, 2) the demand for verified financial gains from the improvements and 3) the demand for continuous development of the organization and the people in it.

It makes us proud to be able to help building bridges between our knowledge and experience and the brains and hearts of some of the best qualified and most forward-looking industrial managers in the Czech Republic. Following the next steps of this journey will be very exciting.

Photos for this newsletter supplied courtesy of Svatoš Zdeněk, photographer, from the Czech Association for Quality and Business Excellence.

New Future Formula has been assisting organizations for 10 years. Over the years, we have supported companies in creating solid, sustainable improvements in all corners of their organizations. We have been sharing tips and tricks over a period of 10 weeks, and in doing so we hope to have managed to inspire you to continue your journey towards the top. In this final posting we address the following key questions: What should be the annual improvement rate of an organization? And how and why is CBI not only crucial for organizations but also valuable for the development of the individuals and critical for the long-term growth of our society.

New Future Formula, 10 years

9. CBI – to the benefit of the individual, the organisation and society...



On 1 April 2017, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements. 

After nine newsletters it ought to be abundantly clear that CBI benefits your bottom line. Constant improvements will provide typically most organisations with annual effectiveness improvements to the tune of 4 to 16 %. As is evident from these figures, organisational results vary a lot. Among the reasons for this are the variations in the naturally inherent possibilities and the motivation exhibited by the organisations to realize them. However, experience has clearly demonstrated that the very best organisations reach their own key figures for the annual effectiveness increases. Key figures of a size that does not lead to ruthless exploitation of people and yet large enough to keep the organisation fit and in increasingly better shape, and with this successful. What is your figure for your annual effectiveness improvements? And is it appropriate? These are core questions that a management group must always be able to answer if it takes an interest in CBI and if it wants to keep its processes and services fit and in good health.

A private company always faces competition. If it creates 8% improvements and the CBI programme of its nearest competitor only manages 5%, the company gains a relative advantage and thereby acquires a range of options that may benefit us all. We can mention a couple: It company can lower its prices by say 3% to increase its market share and/or squeeze out the competitor. It could also invest in innovation and product development. It can build new sales companies. Or it can distribute a higher dividend to its owners, which boosts consumption in other parts of society.

Public service standards that results in happier users and lower costs through annual effectiveness improvement also create new opportunities for everyone. We can either lower taxes, improve the quality or increase the quantity of existing services or allocate funds to other areas. In practice, the choice is always between depressing cost savings, a healthy CBI programme or the unpopular higher taxes.

Whether the company is private or public, we are talking about human losses, financial losses and loss of opportunities when organisations fail to create continuous improvements at all levels and do not live the CBI way.

This means that the question is not whether to do CBI at all but how to do it in a manner that will provide sustainable, economic growth, improve qualifications and support the daily joy of going to doing your job for the individual and the organisations, and improve our work and our lives and make us happy and competitive from now on going forward.

Organisations that have been working successfully with CBI for years often come to the following conclusions:

1. They had the initial impression that it would only last a year or so before they had introduced CBI through dedicated efforts. However, they have come to acknowledge that it took them years to get in under their skin. They also acknowledge that this will be a journey for life.
2. When they first managed to make CBI a fun, educational and exciting process to everybody most of the time, they managed to get a breakthrough for their results which made them feel that it was and still is worth the trouble.
3. They are aware of their annual effectiveness improvement figure and there are indications that it is higher than that of the nearest competition.
4. They understand that there is in fact a critical socioeconomic aspect to CBI since working with CBI creates wealth and prosperity for the company and for society. CBI makes individuals and organisations develop themselves.

All managements should be able to answer a few basic questions concerning the CBI system: 

1. Am I able to give anybody I might come across a pitch about what CBI is and how the individual, our organisation and society at large benefit from CBI? 
2. Have I and my closest colleagues understood the meaning of CBI and why CBI is both vital and motivational? Do we actually realize what sort of active part we play ourselves?
3. Do I personally live the CBI way? Am I personally constantly moving forward? Do I personally act like a role model? 

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client: 

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

New Future Formula has been assisting organizations for 10 years. To celebrate this we are sharing tips and tricks with you over a period of 10 weeks. We wish to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. We have mapped processes (1), identified potentials (2), reflected on opportunities (3), decided (4) and realized (5) the improvements. We have also looked at how to instill an appropriate repetitive rhythm (6). Two factors support a steady production of improvements: steady growth of human motivation and the right qualifications in every corner of the organization (7), and, finally, a system to manage each project and the overall CBI-journey. The CBI-system is the theme of this week.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

8. Ever better systems...



On 1 April 2017, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

The CBI journey is constantly supported by an attentive management, continued competence development, which we discussed last week, and a good system which is this week's topic.

An organisation needs ‘a place’, somewhere where manage its CBI cycle, file its reports and results, manage its projects, share templates, training materials and examples – and much more. You might want to call this infrastructure the ‘CBI system’ or something entirely different. Regardless of what you call it, it constitutes a common, central transparent platform, where all the CBI threads are gathered.

All of today’s organisations are experienced with the process of working with improvements. You might use other terms than ‘CBI’, varying stages and different methods and goals. The work you invest in building a CBI system is an excellent opportunity to calibrate the terminology, tools and improvement practices across the organisation.

But what level of ambitions should you really aim at in your efforts to design, implement and work with your own CBI programme?

Initially, you could rely on the simple solutions using tools already commonplace in your organisation, such as Word documents, Lotus Notes databases and spreadsheets. Later, once your manual tools and CBI procedures are in place and are being used, you might want to automate and structure the procedures by carefully designing a dedicated CBI system.

Another option is to build and implement a grand CBI system from the start, to be used as an internal spearhead and PR branding platform for the CBI programme.

There is no single answer to what road you should choose. This will depend on your circumstances.

Building CBI systems can be very interesting and rewarding. Not far from bygone days when you built your own universes in Lego blocks; you create a universe which the organisational stakeholders must accept and use for it to work. Together you create the ‘CBI Lego city’ complete with ‘houses, roads, cars, airports and fire stations’, and of course you get the best results when everybody wants to join in the fun.

No matter how much you treasure the CBI system, I should like to point out that the crux of the matter is that people govern these systems – and not the other way round. To be more precise, the systems should support the way in which you have decided to work with CBI, the purpose, objective and direction you have defined for your company, and the commercial and operational challenges you are faced with in your organisation.

Below you will find a few general experiences from the work involved in obtaining ‘ever better systems’ for your CBI journey:

1. Do not launch the process of creating the ‘grand CBI system’ until you have a nicely trimmed ‘low-tech’ set-up for the existing procedures and tools for CBI.
2. Focus on making existing procedures and tools simpler and automatic for the CBI process.
3. Some try to compensate for management's failing attention with good systems. They claim that ‘what has already been determined to be done and is not done, will be done with a new CBI system.’ Do not jump on this wagon. Most often, the problem is lack of management motivation and instead this should be addressed.
4. CBI systems may improve results by 20-50%. However, to achieve this you must already be passionate about CBI and already be training seriously towards it. You cannot improve the CBI process merely by issuing new guidelines or new demands through a CBI system. As you will know, new and more expensive boots don’t make you a better football player.
5. System developments and changes must be followed up by training for everybody.
6. The CBI system must be a tool used to improve and operate the company – but not control it. The CBI system must support your CBI work and the implementation of your strategy at all levels.

All managements ought to be able to answer a few basic questions concerning the CBI system:

1. Do we have a ‘CBI system’ in place today? Do we lack a formal system, do we have simple, almost manual system, or do we have a dedicated ‘CBI portal’?
2. How does the system work today? Is it effective? Is it alive and is it constantly improving?
3. Does the CBI system support our CBI work, as evidenced through a cycle and a master plan?
4. Does the CBI system support the general purpose, objective and direction of our company?
5. Do we control the CBI system – or does it control us?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

At this point we have actually reviewed the full CBI formula. I hope you have enjoyed your read and have benefited from spending time doing it. Our next posting will close this series. As the final touch, we will look at CBI from a larger perspective.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI – Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client:

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

New Future Formula has been assisting organizations for 10 years. To celebrate this we are sharing tips and tricks with you over a period of 10 weeks. We wish to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. We have mapped processes, identified potentials, reflected on opportunities, decided improvement projects and realized the improvements. In last week we looked at how to install an appropriate repetitive rhythm for your journey. The theme of this week is how to create a steady growth of human motivation and competence in every corner of the organization.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

7. Increasingly competent people...

On 1 April 2017, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

People are at the heart of all change, which is why the individuals and the teams of an organisation and their constant competence development is absolute crucial when it comes to the success of a CBI programme.

There are, at least, two approaches to be applied with it comes to supporting the constant competence development of the organisation within the context of CBI, 1) through a CBI training programme and 2) through active and structured development of the organisation.

The CBI training is to enable leaders and employees to run a CBI process. For this reason, the training must reflect the CBI pattern decided on for periods between four and six months. This pattern is known as a cycle and the next specific four to six months cycle is known as a master plan. The intention of the training is to enable the organisation to actively manage a cycle where they identify and release concrete potentials in own processes and products in own organisation by means of various tools. The training should be tailor-made to suit the organisation concerned. In our experience, between five and six days is enough. Tests can be made in the process. Successful CBI training concepts include participation by not only top management but also centralised functional leaders from the lean, QA, finance and HR departments. HR can make a tremendous difference by highlighting the human perspective which is so critical when it comes to ensuring that changes are indeed successful and which quite surprisingly is often neglected. This can be achieved by integrating team building, stakeholder analysis and other HR approaches as natural ingredients. Training should be a recurrent theme, and after a few years, all centralised members of staff as well as leaders should have received training. The training might be organised and run by in-house resources backed up by experienced external support.

However, a formal CBI training concept is only one part of the constant development of employees and organisation. Another is to encourage and constantly develop what is known as a ‘learning organisation.’ At best a movement or perhaps even a ‘people's movement.’ Meaning an organisation that provides the environment, resources, freedom and goals for the individual, the team and the organisation to learn.

The possibilities of a people's movement are many and varied – and ideally something that might tamper with the usual views, light the flame of enthusiasm and push you towards change. These are a few examples:

• Allow young, dynamic talents the freedom and the resources to identify and implement their own improvements.
• Train everybody in providing feedback.
• Encourage project managers to visit each other half way through or at the end of a project to evaluate and grade their colleagues.
• Expect every single leader to operate one or more improvement projects.
• Engage in role play and case building in order to illustrate core issues for the organisation.
• Organise ‘award sessions’ where you award prizes to the best projects of a cycle.
• At the end of each cycle, reflect as a group with the purpose of setting up the next master plan and reassessing the cycle.

Leading industry groups work intensely with this field. As a former CEO of a leading industry group once told me, ‘Life has taught me that I do not design, manufacture and sell vehicles, instead I educate people who do it.’

Here are few bits of advice to leaders who strive to get ‘increasingly competent people’ involved in the CBI process: 

1. Management ought to stage a people’s movement. Make it live and prosper on its own by granting the power and the freedom to good people at all levels. It is not easy but fantastic when you manage to do it.
2. Formal CBI training should support and enhance and not be ‘islanding.’ 
3. In order to promote the improvement process within a framework, set up a CBI training programme coordinated by centralised staffs, including lean, QA, HR, finance and CBI. 
4. The CBI training process should be full of the company’s own relevant and up-to-date cases to be addressed in teams – and not otherwise well-intended best practice tools and examples from the automobile industry.

All managements ought to take a regular look to see whether they do in fact succeed in developing increasingly skilled people and an increasingly skilled organisation:

1. Do we have a vivid and motivated CBI movement and a constantly learning CBI organisation?
2. Do we have a formal and recurrent CBI training process of a high standard?
3. Do the CBI training and the CBI movement support the organisation? Meaning, does it support the progress of daily operations, the overall purpose, objective and direction and final execution of CBI cycles?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

In order to perform, skilled people need good tools, structures and systems – in short a good infrastructure. And so, this will be the theme of next week's posting. See you!

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI – Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client: 

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

New Future Formula has been assisting organizations for 10 years. To celebrate this we are sharing tips and tricks with you over a period of 10 weeks. We wish to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. We have mapped processes, identified potentials, reflected on opportunities, decided improvement projects and realized the improvements. But this is not a one-off process, we need to repeat the process again and again. As part of our corporate culture and in structured manner. With this in mind, the theme of this week is how to install an appropriate repetitive rhythm for your journey.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

6. The need for repetition...



On 1 April 2017 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

In the past five postings, we have discussed how to identify, decide on and realize a portfolio of improvement projects using the CBI formula. A typical project portfolio for an area with 100 people may involve 5-25 projects which will all lead to documented bottom line improvements to the tune of 2-8 % when completed within 100 days.

But can you do it again? You not only can – you should do it over and over again, two or three times a year forever. Just like you would not stop keeping yourself physically and mentally fit. You adopt a lifestyle that will at best keep and preferably raise your level through endless repetitions. Every day you do those little things, like taking the stairs instead of the lift. You might organise milestones that make you commit yourself, like going on the annual bike ride in the company of good friends and the annual holiday when you go skiing with the family.

Our lives and calendars are full of such patterns and repetitions, seasonal events such as Christmas, the opening night of the newest James Bond film, the traditional annual reunion with old friends the last weekend in January. These all create a comfortable and familiar traditional setting that can hold both the expected and the unexpected. And no matter how things turn out, everybody is set to go next year at almost the same time. This is how you create a good culture – through repetitions, habits and patterns you have agreed on and which evolve over time.

CBI is a programme that was developed with a view to continuously improving effectiveness. CBI is not only a project and not only a programme. It is also a collective lifestyle change and a cultural conversion process. This is not just something you plan. It takes action – and then thoughts, adjustments and planning. Over and over again. Just like every other major and engaging repetitions in life, you will mostly encounter joy and success, but there will also be sadness and mistakes that you will need to handle and learn from. In this connection, the acknowledged repetitive pattern of a calendar is excellent because it leads you to the good habits that promote the desired culture.

We prefer to compile the repetitions in a CBI cycle or a Wheel of the Year. An innate part of this is the joys and successes that the organisation will have from working with CBI. Working with the CBI cycle, this is when attempts are made to pinpoint the exact nature of the CBI culture.

Most organisations are able to manage two or three cycles a year. You may want to call the concrete plan of a cycle listing specific deadlines and those in charge a master plan. Especially the first master plans is difficult and important to an organisation. Difficult because having knowledge from and experience with CBI in particular and improvement work in general can be a fragmented, huge and also unpredictable task. Important because the first master plan also lays the groundwork, provides the DNA of the contents of the CBI cycle – and with this also future master plans.

Managements often make the following mistakes when they define a fixed framework for the CBI journey (the CBI cycle) and a short-term framework (the master plan):

1. The cycle and the master plan are unrealistic, which kills all motivation.
2. Management goes far too much into detail with the cycle and the master plan – or too little.
3. The cycle and the master plan are realistic and easy to understand – but not followed by the entire organisation.
4. The cycle and the master plan do not provide a joint framework for all types of improvements in all branches of the organisation.
5. The contents of the cycle and the master plan change with every cycle – either too little or far too much.
6. Management does not reflect and learn from the process in a qualified manner from one cycle to the next.

The underlying causes of each of these mistakes are highly varied. Identifying them, learning from them and acting based on them are exciting challenges that will provide any management with insight about themselves.

All managements should be able to answer four simple questions in order to assess whether they can manage to successfully implement CBI improvements – over and over again.

1. Do we have – and are we living – a cycle where CBI is beneficial? Do we share – and are we living – a framework where we commit ourselves to identifying, deciding on and carrying through a steady flow of improvements and effectiveness enhancements?
2. Do we have a suitably detailed master plan and a goal in place for our CBI efforts for the next six months?
3. How do we support the ability of middle management to do their own detailed CBI planning using sticks and carrots?
4. How do we follow up on the ability of middle management and project managers to implement plans, obtain results – and in the process find it educational and rewarding?
5. How do we achieve a process of reflection in a qualified manner and learning from one cycle to the next at all levels?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

Creating and defining a pattern for the continued improvement efforts of your business are not enough, meaning a CBI cycle. Successful organisations also strive to improve the qualifications and the infrastructure of the organisation in parallel with this. These are the issues that we will be discussing in the following two postings. We will start by looking at qualifications.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI – Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client:

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

Read this article in Danish, Polish or German

Visit to Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt – a visit to the future!

On 5 April 2017 New Future Formula paid a visit to Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt who hosted an EFQM event.

At this facility, ‘Industrie 4.0’ is already yesterday’s news with individual IP addresses for all machines. This is also the source of alterations that will forever change our understanding of a car. We experienced one of the most diligently operated and most culture-conscious industrial enterprises in Europe, an enterprise where human beings are the focal point and where concepts such as innovation and excellence are vibrant every day. We experienced a genuine Industrie 4.0 enterprise where all staff members must be highly qualified superusers of state-of-the-art technologies while at the same time being able to communicate and collaborate at a very high level due to the close the interaction between robots and humans.

This is a brief account of an unforgettable visit to the future.

Bosch counts a staggering 390,000 employees spread across an infinite number of locations. One of these is Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt in the beautiful Allgäu region in Bavaria, Germany. Arriving to the area by car, you encounter beautiful nature and grand traditions leading you to pleasant thoughts of a relaxing holiday. But behind a hill you discover the region's largest business enterprise. Here, at the foot of the Alps 3,400 employees spend their working days which makes Bosch the largest employer in this region. The company develops and produces, among others, electronic braking systems (ABS and ESP®), in addition to a range of complex components and automotive control and monitoring systems – such as motor management sensors and video sensors. Besides this, the facility also develops production lines for 11 other similar factories in the Bosch Group. Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt is a lead plant within the Bosch Group.

During the past four years, Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt has been the winner of no less than 15 prizes and awards – this includes being appointed the best place to work in Allgäu, in Bavaria and in Germany. All this is not just to have fun. The outcome is world class results. Over the past few years, Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt’s continuous improvement initiatives have resulted in annual productivity increases markedly above 12% – results that most likely would make most of us short of breath and extremely proud. At the same time, the passionate organization has managed to be the global frontrunners of two new realities that most of us will probably not cast a surprised gaze at until five or ten years from now: Revolutionizing vehicles that are self-driven, electric and interconnected and revolutionizing production facilities where machinery, data, improvements and people play together at an international scale.
 

(Source: Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt)

How do you manage a journey this complex and as successfully as Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt? From the very first steps, management assumed a humane perspective. They were faced with two challenges; for one thing, all employees were to be trained to operate and develop machinery and processes within the scope of the most recent technologies – and across borders and cultures in international teams. For another, they were looking at a staff who averaged 45 years in age and who were not native in computer technologies in a globalised world. They decided that leadership, not management, should be given the main focus; training of managers and employees, both in terms of general skills and specialist competencies and all this about having the licence to think outside the box.

Bosch Immenstadt seems to be completely lacking paper and binders. Everybody is walking around with tablets or a computer tucked under their arms. All employees are superusers of the most recent technologies. And how do you achieve this? Every single day, Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt offers training within the framework of the Bosch Academy. In parallel with this, all employees have joined a health programme to ensure a global feeling of being healthy and bodily fit and thereby capable of personal development – also at a mature age. Bosch fills staff areas, such as changing rooms and canteens, with the newest technological gadgets. They create ‘fearless zones’ where the people can familiarize themselves with the most recent technologies and enjoy the benefits without fear of failure. As an example, you walk around the canteen with your tray finding food and beverages for yourself. Installed sensors automatically register the choices made; no queuing up, no payment here and now – fast and easy.

Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt has avoided the pitfall of the ‘valley of tears’ for their employees, which often happens to organizations introducing new technology; at some point employees break down from fear and lack of insight. At the shop floor, we see people, slightly grey at the top, sitting in groups on the many benches here and there between the production lines. Each with a computer in his lap, they operate some of the most sophisticated production lines in Europe with a smile on their faces and loads of energy. These employees are not just superusers of state-of-the-art technology. They master English at a level that allows them to interact with international teams and present their individual specialist areas to groups of visitors in both German and English. They can work together, think outside the box and manage innovation, improvement and deployment. In short: they are highly trained workers of a kind we have not witnessed before. Industrie 4.0 requires massive investments in the work force, not just technologies.

(Source: Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt)

We saw various sections of the factory, R&D environments and office landscapes characterized by order and precision. This might not be all that unusual for Germany; however, there was an added layer to this – a sense af calmness, elegance and consistency that we have not encountered before. The simple, and yet highly ambitious, strategy was defined using only three headings; Future, Innovation and Excellence – each with natural subheadings.

It was an impressive source of inspiration over a long day to meet the managers and specialists in the forefront who together with the employees strive to make Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt even better every day from a short- and a long-term perspective. We visited the department where they develop secret product technologies. We meet the award winning manager of strategy deployment who has a plan and a way of communicating that was widely accepted by the staff. We spoke with a HR manager who offered a serious business supporting training programme for +45-year employees, lots of educational fun for the many and resonance groups and serious development programmes for the leaders. We saw an environmental manager nurturing a truly holistic image of the overall environmental impact of critical products – and with the dreams, plans and results that make you believe that man can crack the environmental impact nut within the next three decades.

We also encountered ‘Industrie 4.0’ – alive and kicking. We saw robots and long lines of automated processes. Each machine and process with individual IP addresses, continuously collecting data on operation, performance and faults. The roles on the shop floor have changed forever.
Across the globe, machinery and processes are being monitored and optimised in close interaction with human beings. Data can be acquired, cut and analysed using pareto techniques and cause-effect analyses through so-called cockpits and tableaus, and decisions are made to take initiatives and what to do. Once a problem has been solved and a process optimized at a location, this is immediately shared globally with other machines and processes of a similar type. This may sound complicated but in reality it just makes the work involved in ensuring continuous improvement even more effective. We have never witnessed the PDCA circle evolve so fast anywhere before. Of course a prerequisite for this is that people are in on it because people are what makes the wheel of improvement turn.

(Source: Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt)

And perhaps this was the most surprising element of this visit: The encouraging importance given to human beings and human motivation and competencies. The managers and specialists that we encountered in the R&D departments, working with production system development, continuous improvement as well as quality and environmental impact, emphasized over and over again the importance of human beings, learning processes and team work. This is a natural and necessary integral component of the work involved in continuing the realization of the three main strategies.

Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt demonstrates that ‘Industrie 4.0’ does not have to be a ‘harsh, arrogant revolution’ but can actually be a ‘friendly, intelligent evolution’ when centred around people.

(Source: Bosch Blaichach Immenstadt)

On 1 April 2007, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Over the years, we have assisted companies create convincing and lasting productivity gains in all parts of the organization. Over 10 weeks, we are sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We wish to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. Over the past weeks we have mapped processes (1), found potentials (2), reflected (3) and decided improvement projects (4). Now it is time to get the work done - so the theme of this week is project realization.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

5. Realize the improvements...

On 1 April 2017 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things: 

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

Now we have decided on the projects and ‘simply’ need to implement them. A typical project portfolio for an area with 100 people may involve 5-25 projects, which should all be completed within a maximum of 50, 70 or 100 days. Management will launch the projects at a series of kick-off sessions where they will explain the goals and importance of CBI and give an overview of the project portfolio. Usually, the CBI manager will then go into the administrative aspects, time schedules and tools.

This is the moment of truth: Will the torch of change be shining with a bright and sparkling glow? Will all the good project managers and change agents grab hold of the torch and set alight their own small and large projects with a smile and in earnest? This is the question – you will sense the answer right away. The feedback will manifest itself speedily if the groundwork is acceptable. If yes, the project teams will soon be at it.

Now, the crucial moment has come when project managers and project participants must be supported. A good starting point is to meet with them and help them understand the background of each project and support them in their efforts to create a ‘clear, common project goal’. A goal that in order to do its job must gather all involved so that differing personal points of view can unite in a joint effort. It does not matter if you are fundamentally a ‘fact-based’, ‘emotional’, ‘visionary’, ‘result-oriented’ or a ‘something entirely different’ sort of person; ideally you must be able to get the bearings of the project and of yourself in the ‘clear, common project goal’.

The project goal should not be seen as something carved in stone; instead the project team should start by analysing it and repeat the analysis and renegotiate it with the stakeholders at regular intervals. This also applies to the expected financial outcomes that are likely to swing up and down thereby reflect the progressing knowledge throughout the project.

Initially, the project team should experience massive degrees of freedom – so long as they are successful. The success of the project is the team's responsibility who must contact management immediately, if something is obstructive.

Management must provide a framework that will allow project teams to act effectively. You should pay particular attention to the seven most frequent management slips:

1. Management does not accept any discussions of ‘taboos’ or taking ‘skeletons out of the cupboard’, which could otherwise be the exact element that would guarantee the project team success.
2. Management turns the wrong ear when at the first complaints about insufficient time. Working with CBI is a mentally demanding process which is why many people ‘feel’ that CBI consumes far more hours than it actually does, if you measure it.
3. Management does not give a high priority to CBI. They accept that operational issues and fire fighting push CBI aside. Even when it is a documented gilt-edged undertaking.
4. Management does not rank the CBI work highly. Sloppy meetings in the executive committee, feeble CBI reports and no systematic kick-off, follow-up and rounding off of projects is standard. Sharing the celebration of results, projects and project managers is also forgotten.
5. Management does not link CBI and finance. The finance function is an excellent partner when it comes to ensuring that the organization prioritizes, implements and maintains the right changes.
6. Management does not link CBI and HR. CBI projects are all to infrequently used as a tool to prepare employees and leaders for what will become even more plentiful looking forward, change.
7. Management does not support project managers in their leadership efforts as such, but instead request the use of piles of tools, milestones and techniques that merely serve as disclaimers for everybody.

Of course there are many more pitfalls – and most likely you are familiar with many of these. Implementing a host of projects is not an easy task, but an organization with 1 000 people can in fact pinpoint 200 projects every six months – and complete +90% with the desired outcome in 4 -6 days.

How good are you, as management, at implementing CBI improvements? Here are some questions to help you uncover your potential:

1. Do we carry through a suitable volume of improvement projects with overall good results?
2. Are we aware of our strong and weak points when it comes to implementing CBI improvement projects? Are we aware of some of the seven slips discussed above – and if yes, should we do something about them?
3. Do we, as management, grant passionate and structured support to the implementation of CBI projects?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

In our next posting we will discuss what it takes to go through with an improvement process time and again. We will look at how some organizations manage to set and maintain a steady CBI course over a period of many years.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI – Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client: 

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

 On 1 April 2007, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Over the years, we have assisted companies create convincing and lasting productivity gains in all parts of the organization. Over 10 weeks, we are sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We wish to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. Over the past weeks we have mapped processes (1), found potentials (2) and reflected (3). Now the time has come to decide on improvement projects. And so that is this week’s theme.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

4. Decide on the improvements...


On 1 April 2017 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits. 

 Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

You know what you want and why (0). You have mapped processes and products (1). You have identified potentials for your possible harvesting projects (2). And you have identified a number of possible sowing projects (3). By now you have finally reached the point when you get to pinpoint specific improvement projects.

You are now faced with the challenge to decide on a suitable volume of improvement projects. The overall portfolio must be in agreement with the organizational change capability, live up to short-term and long-term goals for your CBI efforts while at the same time making your organization sufficiently mature to work even more with CBI in future. If possible, the same individuals must pinpoint and realize the improvement projects. This will ensure ownership and with this both learning and results.

The above lines convey a simple enough concept but experience has proven that the process “to decide on a suitable volume of improvement projects” is a minefield. There is after all a reason why many initiatives to continue improving do not live up to expectations. Below I will let you in on three pieces of advice on how to avoid some of the most immediate pitfalls in the process of deciding on projects. 

Clear, common goals for the next 4-6 months.
Many companies have a nicely worded and stimulating strategic platform and may even also have a good general ‘purpose, objective and direction’ strategy for their CBI process. Management, however, often lists imprecise goals for the improvement work to be carried out in the immediate future. There is no stimulating edge and no space for local interpretation. A good example of a general goal is “Within 100 days, our improvement projects will result in 10% more repurchases, 25% fewer complaints and about 4% lower costs.” This allows for edge as well as space.

2. Let CBI be an umbrella for all important improvements in the organisation.
Way too often, management accepts an infinite number of parallel agendas for the improvements.
The lean, the QA, the HSE and the HR managers are given sufficient leeway to follow their very own agendas for the changes to be introduced. Also the operating functions, sales, R&D and the shop floor each follow individual agendas. At the same time, the CFO has set in motion a restructuring project. And the IT department runs a major ERP/SAP program. Each and every leader follows his or her personal agenda for change in whatever manner this person chooses. All done with the best of intentions, of course, but the outcome is an organization almost succumbing to the burdens and consequently generating more confusion than improvement. One way of overcoming huge volumes of change is to define an environment, a common language and a transparent framework that you use to decide on and carry through improvements. This is exactly what you can achieve through CBI. CBI can provide you with the framework that allows where you can have a ‘positive brawl’ over a week or two twice or three times a year. In the course of these few weeks, candidate projects are to compete for appointment as the projects to be realized over the next 100 days. Once the ‘brawl’ has come to an end, losers may only by exception be accepted as new projects on the agenda.

3. Lots of freedom for the participants in the project – but subject to clear goals only defined by the project group.
Often leaders are found crawling around on all four following detailed specifications and detailed instructions. This only makes the pinpointed projects few and far between and unambitious. Instead the organizational core change agents must be allowed to pinpoint their own projects. This generates ownership. They are to define their own project goals. This generates ambition. Allow the project managers the freedom and the responsibility to identify projects for themselves and set goals. Ownership and ambitions are the corner stones of sustainable plans. 

Of course there are many more pitfalls – and most likely you are familiar with many of these. However, an organization with 1 000 people can in fact time and again pinpoint 200 projects every six months – and complete 90+% with the desired outcome in 100 days. In our next posting we will look at how the clever organization manages to complete hundreds of improvement projects in parallel.

In summary, an organization working with CBI should be able to provide answers to the following questions:

1. Do you every six months define clear goals for the next 4-6 months of improvement?
2. Have you decided on a framework for all improvement projects for your organization?
3. Do you have a model in place that allows you to prioritize the many possible improvement projects?
4. Do you decide on a suitable volume of improvements? The right quantity, the right complexity and the right participants?
5. Do you achieve positive ownership of the change and the result already at the point of identifying projects?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your CBI steering group.


New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client:

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

On 1 April 2007, New Future Formula set out on its journey. Over the years, we have assisted organizations create convincing and lasting productivity gains. We have had the pleasure of cooperating with early infancy start-ups as well as thriving businesses in need of new inspiration. Over the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We hope to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. Over the past couple of weeks we have mapped processes (1) and found potentials (2). And so we might as well get started on reaping the fruits from the improvement projects? No! We must allow ourselves time to think; we must make sure to ‘sow the seeds’ that will enable us to 'harvest’ the benefits next year. With this in mind, this week's theme is ‘reflection’.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

3. Think carefully if you don't want to lose momentum...

On 1 April 2007 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning our many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

You know what you want and why (0). You have mapped processes and products (1). You have identified the potentials (2). And so, you might as well get started – go ahead deciding on improvements and implementing them. No need to hang back, many people might say. That is why they don't get to sow their seeds – they harvest and harvest and harvest, and then one day, they are baffled why the tree has no more delicious, low-hanging fruits and the grass seems to hide no more attractive apples. They run out of opportunities, ideas and energy.

Organizations that time and again generate above average CBI results introduce a reflective phase before defining their projects. They know very well that in order to obtain long-term successes, you need to sow, fertilize, plant and trim the trees to be able to harvest your fruits over the years to come, too. They know that the portfolio of projects has the right balance between short-term harvesting projects and long-term sowing projects and that especially the ‘sowing projects’ rarely crop up out of the blue.

So what could be sowing projects? Sowing projects are anything that leads to harvesting projects from a long-term perspective. Briefly a few examples:

• Plan and establish a system that will record the types of potentials you have identified. We know today that the potentials are huge but not their exact sizes or components.
• Develop and introduce a reporting system to ensure that already automatically compiled data about a given potential is distributed to the entire organization in a simple and smart process on a regular basis.
• Conduct an analysis into the actual causes, effects and circumstances of a particular issue thereby leading to a number of harvesting projects.
• Train employees in conducting improvement projects.

And how do you identify these sowing/improvement projects There are, at least, two approaches.

You could use ordinary common sense and good dialogue: Which information, which competencies and which systems might increase the scope of the improvements considerably from a long-term perspective? You clearly build on the process map, the process overview and the potentials. You will be faced with the challenge to create an environment where participants work with each other’s ideas, so that the result is synergistic. You should pay attention to the downside of group dynamics, when what is said sometimes matters less than who says it. You should be aware of this already when preparing for the process. There are many tools and techniques you can use, but the simplest method – awareness of the topic – is often the best.

You could also use an evaluation model – for example the Learning Information System, QIS or the recognized EFQM Business Excellence model. The model approach is great, because it gives you a lot for free. It gives you a standardised and thoroughly tested framework for topics and questions, which makes the participants feel comfortable and in control. It typically comes with an evaluation model that can be used for benchmarking. This enables us to trigger that special combination of competition, learning and fun, which most people find so stimulating.

In summary, an organization working with evaluations should ask itself the following questions:

1. Do you pay equal attention to your long-term sowing opportunities as well as you short-term and specific harvesting opportunities, that is your potentials?
2. Do you have a common model that you can use for systematic and regular evaluations?
3. Do you make positive and active use of your evaluation model?
4. Does your atmosphere allow for reflection and evaluation? This means that all participants stay focused and listen to each other.

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your CBI steering group.

Next week, we will address how to decide on a sufficient number of projects so that you can eventually convert last week's and this week’s reflections into actions.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement. Together with our client:
We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

On 1st of April 2007, New Future Formula saw the light of day. Over the years, we have assisted organizations create convincing and lasting productivity gains. We have had the pleasure of cooperating with early infancy start-ups as well as thriving businesses in need of new inspiration. Over a period of 10 weeks, we will be sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We hope to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. Last week we mapped the processes – this week we unveil the opportunities. The theme this week is ”Potentials”.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

2. See the opportunities...

CBI-FORM
On 1st of April 2007 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

As you are mapping processes and products, as we discussed in our last posting, you will invariably also note opportunities – meaning aspects to improve. In this posting I will discuss how to grasp hold of the many opportunities and more than most.

The goal is to provide you with an extensive catalogue of opportunities for improvement.

To begin with, we must acknowledge that we perceive things in surprisingly different ways. We view the same horse as a potential racehorse, a friend or an draught animal. Whether or not we are looking at a horse, a process or a product, there is a huge difference between what we as individuals ‘see’ and thereby perceive as immediate opportunities, waste, quality costs – or in other words ‘potentials’. The one big challenge is to manage a process that leads to ‘great potentials’ that everybody can agree to. Actually, you can state this in numbers. All clever organizations claim that at least 20% of their organization holds a potential and the best of these often characterize 50% of their activities as having a potential. Some leaders tend to become somewhat nettled the first time they encounter this claiming that ‘Naturally we don’t waste between 20% and 50 % of what we are doing’ followed by ‘At management level we would of course never accept this.’ The simple fact is, however, that an organization surprisingly seldom makes a relatively realistic identification of its potentials. And even more rarely does it manage to create a culture and a structure ensuring review of the potentials a few times a year. If you do that, as management, you are already in the European elite division.

The first, and perhaps only really important task for management, is to create a pleasant, free and enjoyable atmosphere with management’s express acceptance, where potentials can be unearthed – where what has been left unseen for years is now seen and what has been left unsaid for years is now said. Management must create an atmosphere where potentials are seen as realizable opportunities that make life more interesting, generate lower costs and higher prices. The atmosphere must convey that it is OK to be ‘not optimal’ most of the time, even to fail several times a day. The atmosphere must convey that sharing all this with each other is harmless, because we are neither stupid nor evil and together we can and we must limit non-optimal aspects, faults and stupidities.

Way to often, the corporate culture does not encourage employees to put their energy and creativity on the line. The focus remains rigidly on cost reduction. Management demands the use of cumbersome, predefined success tools from ‘the 1980s Japanese car manufacturers.’ There are well-intended but overly bureaucratic registration processes (tied up in layers of red duck tape). Their focus might well be facts but they are also very restrictive due to their focus on inferior details. There are skilled people dedicated to lean, quality and finance who do not support the employees’ abilities to put their knowhow and insight into words but instead flash their grand self-confidence nurturing tight models, even though their horizon is narrower than what they have the self-realization to admit.

In summary, an organization working with CBI should be able to provide answers to the following questions:

1. Do employees regard ‘potentials’ as opportunities that might benefit all stakeholders? Or do they think and speak of and treat ‘potentials’ as something negative like faults, crimes and punishment?
2. Does the entire organization and the individual branches identify min 20% of its activities as a source of potential?
3. Do you have a vibrant and learning organization whose potentials increase year by year because a decrease due to improvements is constantly being surpassed by increases tied to newly discovered potentials?
4. Is the definition of potentials broad, is it understood by every man jack in your organization and used constantly?
5. Do employees mostly identify the potentials using common sense – or are they mostly identified by management in its infinite wisdom and using the special toolboxes of staff specialists?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your BKI steering group.

It is very tempting to take action now and pinpoint your projects – but as next week's posting will remind us you need to think before you act...

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our client:

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 148.6 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

On 1st of April 2007 New Future Formula saw the light of day. Over the years, we have assisted organizations create convincing and lasting productivity gains. We have had the pleasure of cooperating with early infancy start-ups as well as thriving businesses in need of new inspiration. Over the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We hope to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. But where are you now? “Mapping” is the theme of this week.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

1. See the world...

On 1 April 2017 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. CBI can therefore improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple, yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

The natural starting point of any improvement process is knowing who does what when by means of what resources leading to which outcome. In view of this, we spend considerable efforts mapping processes and products, and for this part of the process there is a host of tools and supporting IT technologies that can be used to “view things as they are”.

Below I will share some of my experiences with you and offer a few pieces of advice on how to succeed. When you view the world with a keen eye, it gives you a critical background for identification of opportunities and for reflection. Only this way can we really create the much- thought-after continuous improvements.

First, we need to acknowledge that each and every one of us are taken in by wildly different things. From our perspective, mapping of processes and products is a tool with highly different objectives. There is no such thing as true mapping. Your personal inner “geographic map” is strongly dependent on who and where you are. Do you envisage football clubs, museums, blooming parks or something entirely different?

The next challenge that might be in the way can be self-inflicted. This might concern formal IT specifications, ISO requirements, old ERP process mapping in connection with last year's SAP implementation. Add to this, inner mental inhibitions of the type that for many of us disabled the ability to draw horses or cars when we became teenagers.

However, in this context the objective of the mapping process is not to create correct or true maps but to stimulate the insight into where you can improve.

The consequences of this are decisive. Mapping on paper or handwritten boards is often the best approach because by involving yourself you enhance the creation of insights and the ownership of the opportunities you see. Truth be told, most individuals “believe” in what they personally draw today and “question” what others drew the year before. The mapping process creates healthy debates and collective insights highlighting that some things are outdated whilst others are crying out to be simplified or are downright silly. This is what is known as opportunities and potentials, which we will be looking at next week.

Often, you should actually make a conscious effort to “forget” the latest map you drew and instead start from scratch – and then afterwards compare with “the old map” to see if selected parts of that map might actually be better.

Technological support and demands from tools can encourage creativity and insight. With this in mind, you might make a conscious choice and draw the processes using an appropriate system such as iGrafx or making a Value Stream Map every 6 or 12 months. New glasses give you a new perspective and awareness of the world – and thereby enable you to identify new opportunities. But do not jump on the widely acknowledged misconception that one type of glasses will do and that the best person to gaze through the glasses is the brightest young star from HQ.

Since the objective is to map a process or a product for the purpose of creating a basis for viewing improvements, the contributors should preferably change for each stage of the process.

To summarize it briefly, all organizations must be able to answer the following questions when they work with mapping:

1. Are we constantly mapping all key processes across the company from scratch, over and over again?
2. Does the mapping process involve a wide and changing audience and is ownership shared extensively?
3. Who is the driving force behind the mapping process? - externally motivated demands for certification and documentation? - internally motivated objectives and demands for continuous improvements?
4. Does every step of the mapping process provide the participants with insight and is the process educational for them?
5. Is the mapping process run by technologies, tools and centralised staff functions? Or does the organization select its own mapping technologies and tools?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your BKI steering group.

Next week’s posting will scrutinize these maps – find opportunities or “potentials” as the jargon goes.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement. Together with our client:

• We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
• We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at purpose, objectives and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of EUR 140 million. In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

On 1st of April 2007 New Future Formula saw the light of day. Over the years, we have assisted organizations create convincing and lasting productivity gains. We have had the pleasure of cooperating with early infancy start-ups as well as thriving businesses in need of new inspiration. Over the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing with you the essence of our learnings plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We hope to provide you with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top. But what is in fact “the top” for you – and why is it worth pursuing? With this in mind, this week’s topic is “Meaning, target and direction of CBI”.

New Future Formula, 10 years

We have discovered the formula for continuously improving effectiveness

0. Purpose, objectives and direction...

On 1st of April 2007 New Future Formula set out on its journey. Much has happened since then. New Future Formula has been dedicating the past few years to fine-tuning the many approaches to making business enterprises work in a better, faster and more intelligent manner. We call this “CBI – Continuous Business Improvement” because it embraces the entire organization and supports a variety of already on-going effectiveness-enhancing initiatives. The approach can also improve revitalization of on-going programmes, if this is required. Our CBI is also the ideal tool for companies looking for a simple, yet powerful structure and sturdy tools for their future effectiveness-enhancing programme. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary by serving you, the readers of New Future Formula's newsletter, 10 easily digestible titbits.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %. 
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff. 
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

“We are already now having difficulties overcoming the daily operations. Why launch more initiatives?”, leaders and employees ask themselves. This is the natural question when the idea of setting up a CBI programme is aired. Perhaps your company already follows a vibrant pattern of constant improvements. Through knowledge, we want to inspire you to roll even better and even faster with a smile on your face - and it does not matter if you call it a lean, a quality development or an excellence programme.

Your customers as well as ourselves as human beings are constantly yearning for improvements. Changes may not be all that much to our liking, and yet we go through with them time and again because we want the improvement. Since we are constantly in the process of changing and improving things, we might as well make the process interesting and meaningful. Since we are striving to make our wheel slightly rounder, slightly lighter and slightly cheaper day by day, we might as well try to turn the process in to a “continuous pleasure” instead of a “recurrent plague”.

When it comes to CBI, the first thing management needs to do is to make its mind up why the organization wants to work with CBI, what exactly are we aiming to achieve - and how will the organization move towards the goal. In short: ”0. Purpose, objectives and direction”. When you really want world-class CBI, this is a process you must go through. Sooner or later, any ambitious organization must define a keen, stimulating and 200% felt CBI manifest for its “meaning, target and direction”.

The CBI manifest might be a poster to be found at key spots on all locations, with the signatures and photos of all key leaders who with dedication and in blunt words have worded the company’s objective, target and direction – with CBI as one of several or perhaps even the main tool.

The values included in a CBI manifest are indeed weighty. Below you find a few examples:

• You combine your company's strategies to development of the organization expecting a steady flow of specific improvements by means of CBI. This will clarify the picture across the entire organization. You do away with many slides. You avoid many political fights.
• You link innovation and CBI. Innovation is key to the break-through. The many subsequent trims are part of the CBI process to ensure full benefit of the innovation.
• You develop the framework for a shared culture and structure and thereby enable all corners of the organization to overcome a wide flow of continuous improvements.
• You mobilise and support the extremely critical and ambitious autonomous change agents that you find in all nooks and crannies of good companies. They are given a clear and unfiltered mandate to go ahead with and to use as spearhead. You bring about an increase in effectiveness and productivity that outperforms previous outcomes – and those of your competitors. They gradually lose weight if the industry’s performance has been “unclear but around the 3%” while your own performance has wavered “around 6%” for years.

When it comes to CBI, the company’s key leaders must go all in, and the process of developing a manifest is bound to generate productive conflicts and uncover the genuine will power, if it exists. To be honest, it is hard work and constitutes a collective life style change that requires a common approach as well as determined individuals who not only “would like” or “want” but “WANT” CBI. The wheels do not get rounder, faster and cheaper out of the blue. You need to fight this war together – you are bound to encounter “annoying punctures” but you can live through crises, even with a smile, if the future ahead of you is meaningful and reasonably clear.

Management ought to be able to answer five simple questions if they want to claim that they are working seriously with CBI:

1. What works – and what does not work in today’s CBI set-up in your organization?
2. Do you share the same image or perhaps even a manifest detailing what you are to do and what you want with CBI?
   - Does everybody fully understand how CBI supports strategies and dreams?
   - Does everybody fully understand how CBI as a tool can improve your daily lives?
3. Does the organization view CBI as a tool to carry through specific common-sense improvements while at the same time developing its competencies?
4. Does the motivation for CBI exist? Is it fun and educational for every single member of the organization to take part in the CBI process?
5. Is it obvious that you, as top manager, WANT CBI? How? Is it with a motivating and positive mindset – a negative mindset that takes its toll on you?

You might want to address these questions at the next the meeting of your management group.

Our next posting will discuss step 1 of the CBI formula – we will “see the world”. You will receive key advice on how to scrutinize your company processes.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement.
Together with our client:
- We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
- We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.

The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at meaning, targets and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous effectiveness efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of DKK 1100 million (EUR 148.6 million). In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

 

New Future Formula first saw the light of day on 1st of April 2007. Over the years, we have assisted organizations, business managers and employees create convincing and lasting productivity gains. We have had the pleasure of cooperating with early infancy start-ups as well as thriving businesses in need of inspiration for their journey moving forward. Over the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing with you the essence of our learning plus tips and tricks from our first decade. We hope to provide you and your colleagues with inspiration to continue your journey towards the top.

New Future Formula, 10 years in business

We have discovered a formula for continuously improving the effectiveness across the business

On 1st of April 2007 New Future Formula saw the light of day. What were the dreams? Did they come true? And what were the results?

This is a brief situational report to our clients and network. This is our way of showing our gratitude for what you have enabled us to achieve over the years - without you we would not be here today. Perhaps a slightly peculiar way of showing appreciation but this is our way of doing it. 


From the very first day, it has been our passion to create short-term results by improving processes while at the same time ensuring development for people and systems. This allows improvements and thereby outcomes to continue and from a long-term perspective grow. These are the three strings we have always been playing: process improvement, people and systems. Time and again from a short-term as well as a long-term perspective.

We have found ourselves working mostly with industrial companies, across geographic boundaries and functions.

Throughout the financial crisis, people and organizations acquired vital insights and learning. And so did we. It became clear to us that when they had to, several of our clients had the will to not only ‘make negative cuts’ but also the ability to ‘act positively with a long-term perspective’. They had not lost the courage and the belief in the future, despite the worst financial crisis for decades. They called us at the exact right times.


The tasks we set out to do differed widely, although we were able to identify a few common denominators: They cut across functions and across geographic boundaries. They concerned how to strengthen the company’s improvement efforts as a means of realizing a strategic target. The goal was not only to survive this quarter until next year; it was also to fulfil the dream of winning in the market in 3, 5 or 10 years. A dream followed up by investments ‘despite the debilitating crisis’, because it is exactly when a crisis is debilitating that investments come cheap and organizations generally feel particularly motivated to implement changes.

The dreams did come true by implementing small and large concrete improvements, in parallel and persistently over the years. This was effected while at the same time witnessing employees and organizations grow and systems and toolboxes being created. It was great fun, hard and educational. It still is – and it should continue to be so.

During the past few years, we have been structuring our experiences and applying them in a host of other companies. These experiences have now been gathered in our book ‘CBI, Continuous Business Improvement’. We will celebrate our 10-year anniversary by sharing our experiences with you. We will be serving you, the readers of the newsletter from New Future Formula, easily digestible titbits over the next 10 weeks.

By sharing our knowledge, we hope to return some of what we have acquired. If by sharing our knowledge, we can inspire you to constantly make improvements wherever you are – this would make us happy and proud. We have noted that when efficiency efforts are taken to the next level, the companies themselves and the ambient society stand to gain enormously through the growth and the sustainable prosperity brought about by improvements. 
 

Below you will find a tiny summary to prepare you for the weeks to come.

New Future Formula has discovered the formula for working with CBI. You will find it below.

CBI merely means ‘Continuous Business Improvement’ and is our framework for lean, six sigma, operational excellence and other approaches to continously achieve improved efficiency and product development at every stage.

Briefly speaking, good improvement processes are launched and maintained because there is a need for change. For this reason, the company must create and lay down a relatively clear meaning, target and direction of CBI, tied to the past, present and the future. Preferably with a positive and interesting spirit.

Once ‘meaning, target and direction’ of CBI are relatively evident, the following three steps come into play: 1) Feel it, it is happening now; 2) See the opportunities; and 3) Reflect on it, widely and deeply.

When this has settled in, the time has come for step 4) Deciding on improvement, followed by step 5) Implementation, typically in one hundred days. But this is not the end of it. A structure must be in place to ensure continued repetitions at increasingly higher levels moving forward, for years. This is step 6. And the organization must have committed and increasingly competent individuals who come to master increasingly complex approaches, more intelligent systems and better tools. This is what steps 7 and 8 address.

Using the CBI formula, organizations continuously achieve three things:

• Documented bottom-line revenue improvements to the tune of 4-16 %.
• Year by year, improvements that the customers can understand and which make sense for the staff.
• Year by year, people with enhanced skills and improved systems to see and to carry through improvements.

Most likely your company already follows a vibrant pattern of constant improvements. By sharing our knowledge, we want to inspire you to set in motion even better and faster vibrations while smiling in the process.

New Future Formula is dedicated to working with CBI - Continuous Business Improvement.

Together with our clients:
- We design, introduce and support new CBI programmes.
- We inspire, evaluate and improve existing CBI programmes.



The CBI formula is our framework. To begin with we look at meaning, targets and direction. Through continuous process improvements, employee development and system optimization we create a steady flow of results. This allows us to spread out the continuous efficiency efforts to all corners of the company and its life.

Since 2007, New Future Formula has completed more than 8,300 improvement projects for more than 80 organizations with a documented effect on the bottom line in excess of DKK 1100 million (EUR 148.6 million). In the process, more than 500 people have received training.

Read in: Danish, Polish and German

Time runs - Poland performs and progresses

On 18 and 19 January a group of managers from BSB Industry paid a visit to the Gdansk area in Poland. The two days offered the participants an overview of the past, present and future of their own company, introduction to CBI (Continuous Business Improvement), insight into Poland's present day history -and an inspiring visit to the windows manufacturer DOVISTA Polska.

Despite the condensed programme of the two days, the participants claimed not to be left with a feeling of stress because of the red thread running through the many and varied perspectives of the visit. The participants saw a society and a company that are in a continuous state of vivid progress, not only just these days but also over the past decade because human beings continue to perform, improve and learn.

This is a brief account from two condensed days in northern Poland.

'Time' is critical to everybody with a meaningful job, a loving family and in good health. There are just so many opportunities to see, hear, read, understand and experience. Work, family and friends offer so much for you to 'accumulate' and so much to 'consummate' Most of the readers of this newsletter find themselves in a part of their lives thus privileged –and know all about their challenges of the 'many options' versus 'too little time'. As an individual and as an organisation one way of overcoming the challenge is to combine several perspectives. This was exactly what a group of managers from BSB Industry did in Gdansk in Poland on 18 and 19 January 2017. These two days offered updates and information from the management, CBI training, Polish history, networking and an inspiring visit to another company.

The base for day 1 was the welcoming family hotel 'Trzy Stawy' (The Three Lakes) on the outskirts of Gdansk. The group of BSB managers were introduced to the core messages about where the company originally came from, where it is today and where it is heading in the future by CEO Teddy Norsgaard Jørgensen and the two owners Bjarne Elneff and Benny Elneff. This was topped up by CBI training conducted by internal and external experts –Marcin Foks and yours truly.

Towards the end of the first day the group went on a guided tour of the Solidarność Museum, just recently heralded as the best new museum in Europe in 2016. The museum relates the adventurous and yet true story about how a people's movement headed a 'change management process' which, with Gdansk as it basis, changed world history during a decade, meant the breakdown of an empire and lead to the first free elections in Eastern Europe after World War II. After the museum visit, everybody went for a tour of the city centre of Gdansk, which despite the harshness of the winter told of a city that has been warm and alive for centuries and not only for a few boisterous years in the 80s. Day 1 was rounded off with a Polish dinner that made the foreigners who were familiar with the Polish cuisine happy -and gave those who were unfamiliar with it a surprise. The food and beverages were absolutely stunning.

Day 2 took place at DOVISTA Polska. DOVISTA Polska is about half an hours' drive from Gdansk. The company manufactures high-quality windows and doors for the Northern European markets for VELFAC and Rationel. The company's CEO and CFO offered an introduction to the company. They told the attendants about a company and an organisation characterised by rapid growth and development. They now count in excess of 2 000 members of staff, and the company is constantly introducing hundreds of improvements in order to make good products and good processes even better.

During the visit, we met with various managers and employees who in very specific terms and in a committed manner told the visitors about how they are involved in the continued improvement efforts denoted 'Living Future Excellence'. Among the contributors were the FutEx manager who told us about systems and training, the quality assurance manager who demonstrated how FutEx and quality go hand in hand, and eventually the plant manager who demonstrates the abilities to manage and develop both the organisation and the processes in a highly professional way and with a keen eye to maintaining high standards.

Once again we would like to express our gratitude for the kind hospitality displayed by DOVISTA and for the way in which they openly and honestly shared not only the big successes but also their experiments, errors and learning processes. A clear sign of a company that is comparable with the very best of European industry -and which has an appetite for even more.

During two intense days, the managers of BSB Industry acquired an understanding of BSB's targets and the course set, insight into CBI training, overview of the history of Poland and an introduction to the success of DOVISTA. As an added bonus contacts were formed between highly skilled managers in the process.

In two weeks, CEO Teddy Nordsgaard Jørgensen, BSB Industry, and CBI and QA manager Marcin Foks will meet individually with the BSB participants. This gives each manager an opportunity to explain what he 'accumulated' and what he will 'consummate' by way of concrete actions and improvements in his own daily routines during the weeks and days to come.

The events of these two days once again confirmed my hunch that both the Polish society and Polish commerce possess a power to perform that is one-of-a-kind -actually you may rightly term it 'world class'. Poland is definitely worth a visit at the moment.

All readers of this newsletter will probably be familiar with the political crisis that Poland is going through. However, from the perspective of a neutral by-stander you should think that they must be able to overcome it, considering everything else the nation and its population have achieved. By means of peaceful, targeted and hard work the Polish people has managed to break down a dictator, a flawed economic system and an empire in a matter of just a few decades -while at the same time displaying the capacity to build a free, peaceful and dynamic society which is now a natural part of Europe. Looking at it this way, the nation is likely to overcome the current conflicts?

Read in: Danish, Polish or German

Every year The Czech Republic dedicates the month of November to Excellence celebrations. Seminars and conferences are found in all corners of the country with the purpose of improving the growth of all branches of the Czech society and industry. The culmination of the celebrations takes place when leading edge executives and organisations pay tribute to the high standards and excellence exhibited by the very best companies and individuals. The hosts of this event were the nation's president, the prime minister and the chairman of the senate. The place of venue was Prague Castle. This year 500 guests had been invited to attend the peak event; the award ceremony on 22 November where more than 40 prizes and awards were to be presented. New Future Formula was invited to attend by the highly successful Czech body for quality and excellence, the Czech Society for Quality, which has managed to set the stage for and foster a people's movement unlike anywhere else in Europe. This is a brief account of a day that will stay with us forever.

For many years, New Future Formula has advocated that EFQM Business Excellence must be adhered to in a highly concrete and down-to-earth manner, meaning changes and results can be recreated over and over again while employees and business leaders continuously improve themselves - and always with a smile on their lips. We call this CBI - Continuous Business Improvement. When invited to give lectures in various parts of Europe, we readily accept because every time we share our stories and experiences, we learn something new and are fortunate to meet skilled and inspiring people.

Every year in November the Czech Society for Quality organises a number of seminars jointly with a host of other bodies and commercial enterprises. This year, Ellen Gerdi Andersen from New Future Formula was invited to speak on the very day when all the celebrations peaked, 22 November. This was a highlight to us all. There is no doubt that concepts such as "yearly improvement rates", "cycles" and "people's movement" provided the audience with new and inspiring perspectives on their efforts to embrace quality, excellence and CBI.

The nationwide celebrations were attended by many of the leading figures of Czech society and industry - not least the spectacular evening function at Prague's famous castle looming high above the city. The evening was hosted by none other than President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, Prime Minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, and Chairman of the Senate, Milan Stech.

The guests of honour were those that procure excellent quality and excel. They were celebrated in an unpretentious, elegant and stately manner by way of speeches expressing recognition and the presentation of awards. In fact more than 40 awards were presented. The nation's leaders presented the awards to executives and employees from the winning Czech organisations. On stage was exhibited much joy at seeing each other again, warm handshaking and hearty cheek kissing. Those were memorable moments of the kind that creates a strong network across the nooks and crannies of Czech commerce. The event exuded an interest in being open and sharing knowledge with one another. This is the corner stone of a Czech people's movement towards excellence. All attendants shared the joy of every single award winning organisation. Throughout the evening equally ample rounds of applause were given to everybody, also the very last award winners to climb the stage to receive their awards at a late hour.

Compared with the infinite number of never-ending trivial celebrations of the entertainment industry in old-fashioned Western Europe, the difference was compelling. This event was stylish, elegant and boasting culture whilst at the same time hailing meritocracy and the long-term, immense efforts that are almost invariably behind the extraordinary results of an individual's or an organisation's achievements. Results that inspire and are to the benefit of the rest of society from a long and a short term perspective.

The climax of the day was of course when President Milos Zeman announced the winner and presented Miele Technika s.r.o. with the Czech Excellence Award. That evening the well-known Miele slogan "Immer besser", "Always better", took on an entirely new meaning. Perhaps you should add a new dishwasher from Czech Miele on your wish list for Christmas? It would seem a wise choice.

We are very grateful that Mr Petr Koten, CEO of the large, dynamic and highly successful Czech quality and excellence body, gave us the opportunity to enjoy this display of Czech excellence and to learn from an inspiring day and a lovely and memorable evening. A day and an evening like the 22 November go to show how far more interesting Europe has become over the past 25 years and how much has in fact improved. So full of zest and motivation in a time when much is so very insecure and blurred and the number of political distractions is too high to count.

Perhaps the solution is "to walk the Czech talk" more? Perhaps we should build strong and inspiring networks whose top performers are awarded distinct recognition, grant the politicians a facilitating role and draw on highly renowned artists to bind speeches and events together in a beautiful and spirited setting. This would motivate and set the focus! At any rate we are quite impressed with what the Czech Republic has managed to do and does. It is what European role models are made of.

Read in: Danish, Polish og German

On 11 October 2016 BMW Regensburg, Bavaria, hosted an ‘Excellence Day’ attended by among others New Future Formula. This is a brief account about an unforgettable day.

BMW is an iconic brand and let alone its name spurs happy dreams all over the globe. BMW counts in excess of 120 000 employees, and like Toyota the renowned carmaker has over-performed during recent decades. Over and over again the company has gained market shares – and consistently generated profits way above average. An industry that for a century has not only ‘delivered vehicles’ but in fact has been the very essence and defined what an industry really is – and has re-defined the concept despite, or thanks to, fierce competition countless of times.

BMW’s long range of companies and 30+ manufacturing plants have been working according to the EFQM Business Excellence Model for a many years, and last year the perhaps best production unit – BMW Regensburg – was awarded the European Excellence Award. This award is the most prestigious recognition to be achieved by companies and organizations throughout Europe. A total of 30,000 companies are evaluated every year for this award and less than one per mille are among the top candidates with the chance to be hailed as the best and achieve the European Excellence Award. Behind it all we find the EFQM whose purpose it is to promote the competitiveness of European business life. The EFQM is a nonprofit organization founded by some of the top notch businesses in Europe.

On 11 October 2016 the company management of BMW Regensburg, Bavaria, hosted an ‘Excellence Day’ for almost 200 specially invited guests, members of the EFQM. Thanks to New Future Formula’s activities and work for the EFQM, we also received an invitation and attended as the only guests with a Danish background.

The event became a unique experience for Peter Nymand and myself.

Let alone the arrival was overwhelming. A company parking lot with room for the vehicles of 9,000 members of staff – or more likely BMWs of all shapes and sizes – brought out happy smiles. The old saying that ‘the cobbler’s children have no shoes’ certainly did not seem to apply here.

The morning offered presentations given by six different members of the BMW Regensburg top management team – well organized, dedicated and concise, the best of German hosting skills. And yet also with a touch of something that I despite numerous visits to German manufacturing industries have not witnessed as markedly before, a sincere and natural interest in the human aspect. Why am I here? What are our values? Why do we build a bond of mutual trust throughout all parts of the organization? And how do we eliminate the fear of failure while at the same time striving for perfection? To me this was new and sweet music – but do the niceties and well-intended words come with a long life? Would these words merely stand out like nice music on a sheet of paper? Peter and I secretly cast sceptical eyes at each other more than once. Most likely many other attendants had the same thoughts. When you accept 700 deliveries by truck from sub-suppliers every day, when all actions are defined to last no more than 57 seconds, and when you spit out 1400 finished vehicles each and every day, you can easily imagine how hard it will be to find the time and energy to link Value Stream Mapping, problem solving techniques and end-to-end optimization to values, personal development, team development and coaching.

The afternoon was spent visiting all central sections of the huge manufacturing facility in small, individually guided groups where each group met with managers and members of staff who informed the attendants about their work. An unforgettable experience. The groups made visit upon visit, had conversation and conversation and all we could conclude was that the music we heard during the morning presentations was not just ‘music on sheets of paper’, the music was performed in harmony throughout all corners of the wide-ranging organization. We were deeply impressed by the educational and positive spirit of community that we encountered and the multiple times we heard ‘How can I help you?’. In the words of a manager ‘The idea is simply to service your employees to make them succeed.’

Throughout the afternoon we heard a host of examples of improvements and processes of improvement all down the chain. As a few examples the final quality control pointed out some defects in an installation department and the manager’s role was to facilitate root cause learning with a smile and without reproach – and was trained to do this. Production managers and engineers are trained in performance coaching and describing problems in words to employees who are to identify their own solutions – solutions that over and over again turned out to be much better than what they had imagined would happen.

Visiting BMW Regensburg was an invigorating event. The company is not only an outstanding carmaker, it is also a positive place to work for thousands of people who go to work every day and who excel to the benefit of the company, themselves and the local community. No nauseating CSR drabble and unclear HR speak but vivid improvement efforts as a natural part of people’s daily lives and working lives.

Perhaps we should wish for a car tax reduction for Christmas and replace our old, slightly dilapidated Volvo with a BMW out of Regensburg?

On 21 September 2015 Siemens in Congleton (UK) opened up its doors to a “Best Practice Visit” as part of the EFQM Excellence Model. The company has achieved World Class Status as one of the select few in Europe. The visit became an experience far beyond the usual with a company characterised by a carismatic management team, dedicated employees, a musketeer oath and an iron will to win. Ellen Andersen from New Future Formula, member of EFQM Business Excellence, took part in the visit. Below Ellen relays some of her impressions from the visit.

The story of David and Goliath

The modestly sized 500-people Siemens company in the small town of Congleton in Northern England lives life dangerously in the large Siemens Group. In the Siemens Group everything is huge and Siemens companies are generally found in large cities. In the light of this management and employees at Siemens Congleton are under constant threats. Standing with a knife to their necks the operation must present top notch performances in order to prevent some busybody in the Siemens Group from becoming aware of them and getting the idea to close down the small operation in the town of Congleton far out in the Northern English countryside. In the words of managing director Andrew Peters, it is all about NOT being spotted by the radar. Which is in fact what they have managed. In contrast to this the rest of Europe is beginning to realize that the small company featuring 500 top motivated employees and a carismatic management team has created a development and production company in the absolute world elite.

Travelling starts towards the stars

They set out on their journey towards the stars way back in the early 1990s when they determined to work with TQ management. In the process various tools such as Lean, Six Sigma and others were added and things were looking promising when in the mid-00s the crisis struck. The warehouse was bursting, production was on full speed ahead but orders vanished into thin air over night. A single blow had brought Siemens Congleton to the brink of bankruptcy. Twenty per cent of the labour force were let go and the rest divided the work between them. It came as a complete shock to the small community where factory workers go as much as four generations back working the plant. Very soon management was replaced. The new Senior Management Team looked each other in the eyes and made a commitment under musketeer oath to show the world and big brother Siemens that Siemens Congleton indeed deserved its place in the world. They chose to apply the EFQM Excellence Model in order to get the company going again. They knew the performance had to be something beyond the ordinary in order to rescue the facility from the guillotine within the Siemens Group. And so management called the EFQM office in Brussels to ask what it would take to become a classified World Class company. The reply was to achieve an assessment score in excess of 700 points. Right – then this is what we do, management promised each other and the top notch motivated personnel who likewise promised each other never to risk losing their workplace.

Siemens Congleton to achieve World Class Status

Today, five years later Siemens Congleton has in fact achieved a 700+ score in an EFQM assessment. The then doomed company won the 2014 prize for Manufacturing Excellence and Organization Development and is also one of very few companies in Europe so far to achieve World Class Status. The tool continues to be the EFQM Excellence Model because, as Jason Speedy, Head of Operations, explains, this model asks all the nasty questions. You can't hide anything. Another key word is agile management. All meetings are conducted standing on the shop floor. Top management's day-to-day task is to remove any obstacles obstructing the path for the employees. It is obvious that the employees are used to seeing top management on the shop floor and discussing matters with them. There is only a short distance from top to bottom in the organigram and action is taken immediately.

Strategy 2020 to become nothing but a game changer

They have just launched the new 2020 strategy and management has promised that it will become nothing but a game changer to Siemens Congleton. A new standard will be set for how to make the best cross-disciplinary use of the qualifications harboured in the organisation. Conventional professional barriers will be broken down. They will work with 360-degree teams. The aim of Strategy 2020 is to once again give the company a critical lift in relation to its customers and the competition. Thanks to the common basis and the shared spirit that has developed between employees and management, the dreams and the will to reach new heights continue even after five years of hard work. The strategy lies with the mid-level managers because they want to avoid line managers who only focus on their own areas. The employees express pride in their factory and great job satisfaction. Many have been employed there for years. They express the need to improve themselves every day and dare not rest on their laurels. They never want to risk giving the Siemens Group an excuse to close down their factory in Congleton.  A visit to Siemens Congleton is loaded with surplus, smiles and heartfelt warmth. It was an unforgettable experience to meet such joy in one's work and a creative spirit, so characterised by vision and integrity.

 21 September 2015, Ellen Andersen, New Future Formula

Mr. Jason Speedy, Head of Operations at Siemens Congleton

How has using the EFQM Model impacted your results?

“We have seen a real positive impact on our key results, but this is no surprise as this is the essence of the Model. If you clearly define your strategy and align your people, key approaches and partners to this strategy, then the results will follow. This is the beauty of the EFQM Excellence Model, it is common sense leadership.” 

Andrew Peters, Managing Director at Siemens Congleton

What is the one thing other organisations can learn from you?

“One of our key focus areas has been managing with agility. We have systematically implemented a culture and a framework that enables us to make quick decisions and react to change whilst also delivering a clear productivity benefit. As an example, our monthly Senior Management Meeting has moved out of the Boardroom and is now structured as a series of stand – ups on the shop floor. This allows the management team to see issues first hand, fosters a culture of openness with the employees and has also reduced the meeting time by halt. “

The Business sector needs a change of lifestyle - starting from within

CBI – Continuous Business Improvement – is a powerful tool to be used by companies set to build a culture allowing for continuous improvement.

The European business sector as a whole is in need of a change in lifestyle. A change that will create a common obligation to aim for improvement and change as a constant approach.

These are the words of Niels Gørup Christiansen, founder and owner of the Danish consultancy firm New Future Formula. Niels Gørup Christiansen has dedicated years of his career to turning improved business routines into a lifestyle for companies – and as he puts it, expectations alone cannot do the trick:

– No, this is something we need to demand from each other. Management must have the courage to demand that employees are willing to propose minor and major improvements of the daily routines on a regular basis, and conversely employees must be able to demand that management listens and reacts to their ideas.

Niels Gørup Christiansen calls this the CBI principle – Continuous Business Improvement – which is also the title of his new book. Click here to order!

But why should the European business sector look towards CBI? The answer is simple: the bottom line. – By now we have assisted more than 80 companies incorporate the CBI principles in their daily operations. This has given these companies significant and easy improvements of their work routines and yielded annual improvements of the bottom line of between four and fifteen per cent. In parallel with this the companies raised employee satisfaction because the employees could see for themselves that their hard work and ideas paid off.

The target is of course that the cultural change becomes an engrained component of the company's identity and self-esteem, Niels Gørup Christiansen says.

And he continues with an example:

– Imagine a company with 20 employees and annual sales totalling 4 million euro. The potential improvement for a company such as this will typically amount to 800 000 euro, and usually we quickly identify about ten per cent of this potential. Let alone the first year this will mean a 80 000 euro improvement to be reflected in the bottom line, the consultant calculates.

According to Niels Gørup Christiansen the most healthy companies are characterised by employees who take their working lives in their own hands by constantly looking to think along new lines.

– Modest, even humble, improvements also count. The point is that they must come in a continuous flow. This creates the basis for far larger jumps and innovation at a later stage – and we must promise each other to identify improvements. Something at least the Danes are not very good at, he states before continuing:

– The typical Danish manager a is pleasant and easy-going person who listens to the proposals put forward by his/her employees but who is really lousy at leaving it to them and entrusting them with the responsibility to actually realise the ideas – and equally typical he will not get around to doing it himself. Quite simply the workplace is characterised by too much consensus and too little edge, Niels Gørup Christiansen states.

In his opinion European companies and their employees should – using CBI as their tool – get used to navigating in a world characterised by increasing change and uncertainty. One way of resolving this is to entrust employees with more responsibility for their own working lives. Because CBI works from the bottom up.

– The labour market is based on formal predictability where we are more focused on closing back doors from fear of letting in the unknown rather than opening new doors for ourselves. We need to share the responsibility for the workplace with our employees, he points out.

This is another reason why he compares CBI with a change in lifestyle.

– You might compare it to quitting smoking or exercising more. Only this is a collective effort; the organisation as a whole has to tune into thinking along new lines – and this might take a while. In return, however, you will be rewarded in cash, Niels Gørup Christiansen argues.

You are welcome to direct any queries to Niels Gørup Christiansen at +45 2440 5770 or by e-mail to ngc@nff.dk.

Niels Gørup Christiansen, 49 years, among his previous work experiences are management positions as manager and director with Grundfos and Johnson Controls. Mr Christiansen has been leading the way for hundreds of improvement projects, small and large alike. He founded in 2007 the New Future Formula consultancy firm based in Denmark. The company assists both small businesses and large corporations improve and grow based on the CBI formula – Continuous Business Improvement.

We wish customers, business relations and network a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Best regards, Ellen Gerdi Andersen and Niels Gørup Christiansen

"Had someone claiemd a year ago that the LEGO Group could have a new global quality mangement system in place in just nine weeks, most would have doubted them. But had they claimed it would be fun, no one would have believed them. The reality is that both are true."

The following is based on an interview with Senior Director of Global Quality, Cornelis Versluis, from the LEGO Group. The past year the LEGO Group has completed a very challenging quality project. New Future Formula has assisted through the project.

The Challenge

Last year the LEGO group was faced with a multitude of challenges. We had just taken back the ownership and management of three manufacturing plants - with a wide array of suppliers.

This left us with several different quality management systems (QMS). At the same time the US legislation on toy safety was about to place major demands on the QMS.

Furthermore we needed to get certified in three sites and re-certified in accordance with ISO 9000:2008 at the other sites.

We turned to New Future Formula (NFF) for assistance on how to approach the task.

New QMS in just 9 weeks

With little time to spare it was important to find a partner who could induce both knowledge and speed into the development of the new global QMS.

Just nine weeks after kick-off the first site was certified.

Playful learning

Quality management is often perceived as boring and perhaps even worse, irrelevant. We needed a way of breaking the ice and let pople know that quality can be not just fun but also very relevant. Together with NFF we came up with the concept of Playful Learning to address this issue. It is composed to two components:

• Focused Message

• Educational Games

Focusing the message is hard for quality professionals in general. We are accustomed to being exact, specific and thorough. The trick to making people listen is to find the core of your message and communicate only this. We came up with one slide showing the QMS as composed of only five components.

When using educational games it is normal to use play as a decoration or add-on to the subject itself. In Playful Learning we separate the two and let people just play. Afterwards the experience from the game can be linked to real life through reflection.

Since the reflection is a critical part of getting the message through it is important that the games or exercises have been designed to allow this.

QMOD

The annual conference for Quality Management and Organisational Development was held in Verona last week , from August 27th to 29th. Quality is at the core of the culture of LEGO. We felt that the message on Quality by Heart and Playful Learning was so important that we would like to share it with the leading authorities.

NFF collaborated with us on the paper for the conference.The result speaks for itself. I was invited as the main speaker on the conference.

With the assistance of NFF, we gave the participants something to remember.

"I believe NFF made ad difference for us in terms of both speed and quality with the added bonus of a lot of fun and energy."

The Quality Manager is seldom considered to be the key supporter of innovation. But he can play an important role in bridging gaps and streamlining the innovation process...

Stage Gate' processes are often perceived as bureaucratic...

Innovation is a lot more than product development...

In the 80's and 90's many companies implemented a so called ‘Stage Gate' process to manage new product development - and sometimes with the main purpose of complying with the ISO9001 standard.

It is often said that those kinds of "regulations" are limiting creativity, create unnecessary bureaucracy and reduce engagement and efficiency. However, most people would agree that at least two important milestones are crucial and must be handled in any project:

Is management willing to launch the project, based on the potential business, the cost - and the risk - compared to other opportunities available?

Is the product - or service - ready for release to the market, meeting all external and internal requirements?

The process beyond that must be carefully designed to meet the special needs of your organization and industry - "Off the Shelf" solutions won't work.
And it must recognize that the nature of ambitious innovation means uncertainty and iterative steps - the most important decisions are taken at the early stage where you have the biggest lack of knowledge. Finally it must extend its scope beyond "classic" product development. Successful innovation looks at the total value chain to add value. This is often not addressed in today's ‘Stage Gate' models.

So maybe it's time to review and optimize your innovation process?
If it is done right, the results will derive in terms of more profitable business, less quality cost and more engaged people who work together following a process that is simple, transparent - and makes sense.

The Quality Manager can play an important role by facilitating the improvement process and by raising questions like:

Does the current process reflect the way our organisation wants to innovate future solutions?
Are some of the detailed requirements really ISO90001 requirements or are they internal "fads" from the past when the organisation had a different level of maturity?
Does the process provide the necessary guidelines and tools to help people across functions work together and take the best possible decisions in the situation?

No company can grow or even survive without innovation. The vision, the creativity, the competence - and the courage to take a risk - are the prerequisite. An efficient and well deployed innovation process is the enabler.

Don't wait until a formal deviation pops up in the audit report - and sets the wrong stage for a wonderful opportunity for improvement.

Toyota has for decades been synonymous with Manufacturing Excellence.
The Toyota Production System has been highly influential as a role model for companiesworld wide, and as a key inspiration for the Lean concept. In 2009 Toyota lost money and market share. Why

2009 Toyota lost money for the first time since 1950. Obviously it was not only due to the finance crisis, the market share also declined and the independent quality ratings also dropped. What went wrong - and why?

These important questions now start to appear in the international business press. Latest in the acknowledged magazine "The Economist", which in December cleared the front page announcing "Toyota slips up".

Inside the magazine the situation and the causes are described. The Economist out line the following main reason for the decline: "Toyota's rivals have caught up. They now offer cars that are just as reliable, but far more exiting than the rather dull vehicles Toyota has concentrated on producing in ever larger number".

However it is recommended by the magazine to continue the already de-cided way out of the mess: "Toyota has a good chance of putting things right. It is no GM, which had far deeper struc-tural problems before it used bank-ruptcy to offload some of them. It has a boss, Akio Toyoda, who understands what has gone wrong - namely, that it has jeopardised its formerly stellar reputation for quality by pursuing vol-ume at all costs and by failing to put the needs of the customers first. It has started to sort out some of its problems. Quality and reliability are getting back up to the mark. Now it needs to make more exiting and innovative cars."
I believe that most of us can learn from the Toyota case. As for NFF we have come to the following reflections:

Do not believe anyone who says that "To be successful we must just do like the very successful company X. And the receipt is Y. And it is described in details in book Z".
E.g: X = Toyota, Y = Lean, Z = "The Toyota way". The life is fortunately far more unpredictable and complex, and organisations far more dynamic.

The best organisations strive for "Excellence" - and not only for "Manufacturing Excellence". Ex-cellence can be defined as "achieve and sustain superior levels of performance that meet or exceed the expectations of their stakeholders".

Consequently, the best organisa-tions build and improve their own Business System - not just Pro-duction system. And they build their own model for Continuous Business Improvement across the whole business system - not just lean, six sigma or another in a half religious and ready-for-use tool package.

My New Year Resolution shall be on a frequent basis to remind myself of Peter Drucker: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself".

I hereby wish every one of you a happy new year - full of refreshed thinking, acting and harvesting.

Some people say that the importance, relevance and influence of the
concept of Quality in management has diminished is the last decade
– and will disappear in the next decade. They are right, that the concept
have got less attention the last – but they are wrong, when they believe
it will disappear. Quality never dies.

The quality of products, services and performance have never been more important and relevant than it is today.

We experience that professional customers after the financial crisis more than ever carefully assess their purchase in terms of quality? We also experience that organizations now grasp quality form a much more enthusiastic angle.

What has changed? And what is the future of Quality?

What has changed: today we much more carefully do the best buy. We have moved from few suppliers with long lead time to many suppliers with short lead time.

In the last decades, the concept of quality in most organizations has become synonymous with "conformance or non-conformance to requirements" - say Black or White. It could be "conform to tolerances", no matter how bad or meaningless they have been specified. Or it could be "conform to external system demands" - typically at leat the SIO 9000-series and some industry specific product quality requirements. Again - no matter how little life they bring to collective quality development of the organization.

After dramatic cutbacks throughout 2009, most organizations have now found a basically healthy platform. The unnecessary has been cut off. Just by doing so, the quality key figures of products and services in many places have improved over the past 6 months.

The future of Quality: See the many opportunities and realise the strategic challenges using the concept of quality. The concept of quality has many strengths and opportunities. Quality is not just black and white. It has many colours which can be painted and applied in thousands of stimulating ways for addressing the crucial challenges of organizations. This is the future of Quality.

Let me give some small examples of management teams who over the past six months have revived the concept of quality in such focused way:

"The mistake causing link in the organization is now continuously and systemtically presented together with sometimes dramatic technical, commercial and financial consequences caused by apparently "small" mistakes.

The issue is no longer just to "comply with requirements". The important thing is, based on internal and external customers' real need and meaningful expectations to re-assess all relevant requirements on a continuous basis.

The cost of quality in most organizations is well over 10%, and can easily be reduced by 20%. This is a good and meaningful way to reduce the case base by 2-4% every year.

"Quality never dies". Quality again has shown its strength by creating a common language and joint framework for a determined development of organizations. Good luck to you and your organisation's quality future.

Include your sales people from the beginning and achieve success with future launches.

From high expectations to painful memory

Have your company ever had a disappointing experience launching a new product and not understood what went wrong? Everyone from innovation, to purchase and management have waited for the big day when the "baby" was ready to leave the developmen dept., but what happened? Nothing! Slowly the euphoria about the new product evaporates - except among the R&D people who continue to talk about the fantastic product that never made it, and in this way ensure that the organisation will never let go of the painful memory. For sure something went wrong during the development proces. In my experience that something was that the sales professionals were never involved. Include your sales people from the beginning of the development process and achieve success with future launches.

Include the sales force

Unfortunately most companies never include their sales force when developing new products. It is rear that sales people participate in meetings about new products in the pipeline. R&D is carried away by the technical possibilities. Production is keeping an eye on capabilities and scaling, and management is focusing on budget and timeframe. No one is thinking about sales and marketing. That is fatal. Use your experienced sales professionals to prepare the launch.

Prepare the launch in due time

A product launch must be prepared far in advance, as early on in the innovation process as possible. I have throughout my professional career time and time again heard people from innovation talk about really great products that never amounted to anything. When I ask if they involved the sales department, they look at me with surprise, because according to them, sales people do not understand technical issues! This is a dangerous attitude. You can't just hand over a new product to a sales person the day before it is launched and then expect him or her to go out into the market place and get orders. It is a process that takes a lot of preparation to succeed.The process of bringing a new product to the market has to be well prepared. If not, the sales force feel uncomfortable with the product, and will not present it to the customers. A true sales professional will not face a buyer trying to sell a product, if he is not certain that his organization back home is able to deliver.

Support the credibility of your sales people

The sales representative and the buyer have a strong business relationship, developed over time and based on mutual trust. The biggest asset a sales professional has is his credibility, and a good sales person will never do anything to damage that credibility.Companies need to understand this. That is why the company must understand the importance of including sales people in the development process. The sales force must be given enough time to prepare the launch and they can often contribute positively with market feedback.
There are unfortunately still too many companies out there who don't understand why their innovations never amounted to the success that was expected. Don't be one of them but try one time to include the sales staff in the innovation process. If you do, your company will achieve much higher success rates at the next product launch.

Where people meet

From high expectations to painful memory

Warranty costs in World Class organizations: All parts of the organization are involved, and the healthy organization is ready to learn - and act to improve. Failure of the past is seldom a life-threatening problem - the challenge is consequent learning for the future. Continuous improvements are part of the DNA . Every part and every function has a plan for reducing the number of warranty cases by 15-25% on an annual basis. The management has a passion for "zero defect", knowing that a continuously falling level of warranty cases is not only a direct source of more profit and satisfied customers - but also a source of a managerial "mental surplus" releasing energy for development of the overall total value chain of the company.

Warranty costs - the place where people meet

In the old days people met at the village pond or the village pub to exchange ideas, develop insights and make agreements about joint ventures. Recently I was asked: Where is the village pub or pond in the modern company? Where is the place where managers and employees meet every day to understand what is outside the "normal routine" of orders and tasks.

My answer is clear: It is the warranty costs of the company. People talk about them at the canteen tables, at the coffee machine and at meetings at all levels. At no other place do so many perspectives of the company meet:

• The problem must be solved now for a specific customer who by the hour loses business or satisfaction.

• Perhaps, the problem must also be handled now for customers who have not yet encountered the problem - but may or may not encounter it.

• The cause of the problem must be found and eliminated so that the same mistake does not happen again.

• The underlying causes of the problem must also be understood -and must also give rise to future preventive actions.

• The problem and its solution must be registered via an IT set-up satisfying demands according to the accounting law, ISO9000 and customers - and internal and external demands and expectations.

• The problem has considerable and assessable effects on customer reputation and loss of sales - what happened, what does it cost to have effective processes and what can be done? 

All parts of the organization are involved. The service department is in charge of the final fire fighting process. The provoking factor - development, sales, production etc. must necessarily take responsibility for both the corrective and the preventive actions. The economy function is busy understanding the financial consequences and risks. The quality department is focused on responsibility and the fulfillment of internal and external quality management system demands. The sales department is obviously very busy with the question as to whether the customer and the market will regard it as "an isolated incident where the company really took responsibility" - or an example of the "brand and the organization not matching the competitors at all".

It is obvious that the management of the company is busy with the warranty costs. Here the products and the service of the company have met real life - and been a nasty disappointment to customers and employees. Here humility is at its place. Here the healthy organization is ready to learn - and act to improve.

What does it take to become World Class?

Of late we have often been asked: "What is World Class within warranty costs? Below we have condensed the many years' experience into seven questions which, when answered convincingly, reflect World Class level.

1. Are there shared codes and definitions of
2. all incidents of defects experienced at the customer's "within warranty"
   all incidents of defects experienced at the customer's "outside warranty - but within the customer's reasonable expectations"
   all "close-to defects experienced" at the customer's of types 1
   or 2
3. Are all incidents of defects or close-to defects reported and registered in an effective and disciplined fashion?

Are there well coordinated systems for:
immediate remedy of the customer's negative experience - typically run by the service department?
handling according to the accounting law - typically run by the finance function?
correction of defects and learning - typically run by the quality department

How large are the reported annual warranty costs (see A1)? Typically 0.5 - 3% of turnover and clearly better than competitors. How large is the total estimated loss of sales in connection with the customer's negative experiences. Typically factors B - E of the reported annual warranty costs. Are these costs reported as a whole - and to each department responsible?

Are systems generally available in the different departments facilitating easy analysis of defects, the connection of defects, environments of defects etc., thus facilitating the development and test of hypotheses in the hunt for the causes of defects?

Is there a culture for and are systems available to learn from defects? In each department - and across the organization continuous improvements are part of the DNA. Has every part and every function a plan for reducing the number of warranty cases by 20% on an annual basis through activities carried out within the next six months? When new products and services are introduced - how is it secured that "teething troubles" are completely avoided? How are defects prevented?

The management understands and acts out that there is always time and priority to prevent defects - and when defects still occur, because we are after all only imperfect human beings, it also has the time not only to correct defects, but also to learn from them. The management has a passion for "zero defect" and knows that a stable, low and continuously falling level of warranty cases is not only a direct source of more profit and satisfied customers - but also a source of a managerial "mental surplus" releasing energy and insight for more exciting initiatives such as innovation, sales initiatives and development of the overall total value chain of the company.

Closing thoughts

A really large amount of money is to be picked up by a reduction of warranty costs - costs are saved and new customers and new business gained. The key to success lies in perseverance. It is not sufficient to move the company from one level to the next as a once-only phenomenon. It is all about creating cycles reducing warranty costs by 15-20% each year - and raising the company step by step towards world class. We will revert to these issues in coming newsletters. If, however, you cannot wait or just want a further discussion about the great potential of this field, you are welcome to contact us.

New Future Formula visits Bosch in Bamberg, Germany

Robert Bosch GmbH is leading in Business Excellence. As we all know, the industrial culture of Germany is among the strongest in the world. The Bosch Bamberg site with 7.500 employees is among the best in Germany. It was very inspirational to look into a world-class organization. Bosch again and again draws processes, sees opportunities and realizes them in every part of the organization. They constantly give highest priority to quality and technical performance and invest the required time and resources. 

On 25 April 2012 New Future Formula got the opportunity for an exciting visit to Bosch Bamberg
The customers are exclusive and demanding. Audi, Mercedes and BMW are among the most well reputed in the automotive industry. The products are sparkplugs, fuel injectors and other small key parts. Bosch Bamberg is the lead factory of the international Bosch production network, counting more than 20 production sites worldwide.

150 senior executives from Europa visited Bosch Bamberg

Through our membership of the EFQM organization, we got the opportunity to visit Bosch Bamberg, the 2011 EFQM Prize Winner. On a sunny morning 150 senior executives from other EFQM member organizations in Europe met in picturesque Bamberg, ready to be inspired by Bosch' journey towards world class, to network and to "share what works" - the motto of EFQM.

Bosch has a fascinating story to tell

They have demonstrated that it is possible to develop, produce and sell in Western Europe. Bosch has focused on the combination Continued Process Improvement and Innovation. Continuous Process Improvement has over the past 7 years lead to a 40% cost reduction. Innovation has created technological breakthroughs. These new technologies will reduce the fuel consumption of the next generation of components for the global automotive industry by 30%.

Each activity and project support company strategy in a direct way

On the plant tour we passed by different Information Desks. Managers and employees from the specific area explained their way to Continuous Process Improvement. Boards, graphs and figures showed how they contribute to realization of the overall company strategy and strive for continuous improvement. Questions and answers were exchanged with references to the visitors' own challenges at home. 

Remarkeble increase of customer satisfaction

Bosch has established seven channels for customer feedback, adjusted to various customer types. One important feedback tool is the "Bier Decke" - the small round layer on the table under the bear glass. Bamberg has 29 breweries and "Bier Decke" - is everywhere, so in this way easy at hand. It is easy to fill out the questions printed on the backside of the "Decke". This feed- back tool has turned out to be one of their most valuable. Cross organizational teams have implemented improvements into the customer related processes. The customer satisfaction index has increased remarkably.

Mentors ensure the transfer of theory into practical improvements

Bosh runs two training programs: Continuous Improvement Program and Bosch Production/Business System. Each manager is trained for 6 days. Specialists are trained for 17 days. After the training, people go through a so called "transfer period". During this phase they are supervised by an internal mentor. The aim is to ensure the transfer of knowledge from "theory" to "actual improvements". Bosch has a statement "talking is silver, action is gold".

Energy Value Stream Mapping reduces energy consumption and CO2
In one area we were introduced to Energy Value Stream Mapping. 65% of the energy consumption was in operations. For each stage of the production flow, "kw" and "g CO2" was measured and listed. New lower targets were defined for each stage. Today the energy consumption and CO2 has been reduced remarkably, by making minor but innovative adjustments of machines, materials and flow.

Reduction of lead time in Order handling and Capacity Planinging.
In the Sample Shop - with 400 employees, mainly white colors, Bosch has reduced lead time from an average of 4-5 days to 2 days. The tools have been standardization, simplification and using the well known techniques for continuous improvement. They had expected to see ERP/SAP change as strong tools in the process - but surprisingly no contributions had come from these areas.

Conclusion

After four intensive hours in the factories, we returned to the conference area. It was time to network. Visitors and Bosch executives and managers enjoyed a light meal and engaged in conversations for about an hour. The visitors were very satisfied. Bosch has for sure created an interesting program.

On our way back to Denmark we had time to reflect about Bosch Bamberg. What is it they have done so successfully?

Bosch is able to derive and implement a strong strategy, and to commmunicate it on just one single slide. They ask for references to the strategy from every activity and every project in the company. People everywhere know exactly where they belong on the strategy slide. It is always and again and again about drawing processes together - and then about improving them. Less important is the kind of method. Finally, Bosch creates "Constancy in purpose" for the whole organization. There is a deep and stable believe in change. The worth and value in continuous improvement is critica.