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 necessary skills can differ among industries, the challenges you are trying to address, and your role in an organization. To help you choose the best program to meet your current need, we offer a few insights into the different types of programs 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 provide participants with a roadmap and the tools 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.

Our Improvement Programs use the DMAIC roadmap as the foundational problem-solving basis. Our Programs for Improvement courses build on the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Body of Knowledge to provide participants with the skills needed to take a data-driven problem-solving approach to back-in processes. Backend 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 complete description of each of our Improvement programs.

Innovation Programs

In addition to improving 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 profoundly understanding potential customers’ unique needs and desires. This deep understanding of how you directly interact with customers (touchpoints) can help you and your team develop 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.  Organizations and communities are crucial 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 needed to effectively work across industry sectors, knowledge domains, and individuals with different levels of knowledge, expertise, and worldviews.