Programs for Improvement and Innovation
Building the skills and talent that you need when you need them!
Business challenges come in different shapes, sizes, and levels of complexity. Our Programs for Improvement, Innovation, and Sustainability are designed to provide you with the skills that you need, when you need them, to meet your unique challenges and opportunities. However, choosing the program that will provide the skills needed can differ among industries, the challenges that you are trying to address, and your role in an organization. To help you choose the program to best meet your current need, below we offer a few insights into the different types of programs that we offer.
Improvement Programs
One of the hallmarks of current-day organizations is that they all need to continually improve the processes used to produce products or provide services. Our improvement programs focus on providing participants with a roadmap and the tools needed to improve organizational processes. Examples could include working to improve the quality or specification of a product, improving the throughput or flow of a process, or efforts to minimize the cost of producing a product or providing a service.
Each of our Improvement Programs uses the DMAIC roadmap as the foundational basis of problem-solving. Our Programs for Improvement and Innovation courses provide participants with the skills for data-driven problem solving of back in processes. Back-in or backstage processes are those processes that create the products and services used by customers but don’t necessarily interact frequently with the end-user customer. In addition, we offer lean courses that provide more detailed instruction on how to approach flow and throughput issues in manufacturing and services organizations. Click below to see a full description of each of our Improvement programs.
Innovation Programs
In addition to the need to improve existing processes, long-term success requires organizations to develop new products and services. Our Innovation programs provide participants with the skills needed to lead a design program aimed at the development of new products and services. These programs focus on developing a deep understanding of the unique needs and desires of potential customers. This deep understanding of how you directly interact with a customer (touchpoints) can help you and your team develops products and services intended to WOW your customers.
Finally, we live in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) world. Organizations around the world find themselves trying to solve complex societal problems to maintain a state of well-being for their employees and communities. We know that organizations and communities are key to creating strong and resilient societies and countries. Also, we know that many problems need solutions that cross knowledge domains or sectors. This requires working across organizations and social groups to create trans-disciplinary and trans-sector solutions. Our systems thinking programs will introduce participants to the systems skills that are needed to effectively work across industry sectors, knowledge domains, and individuals with different levels of knowledge, expertise, and worldviews.