I used to work for a company as an assembly technician that built filters. In the process, there was one step, that involved hand drilling these pieces of metal. Hand drilling, not an easy quick task. Imagine screwing in a screw with no drill into metal for 8 hours straight. To go through one of these things it took about 2-3 minutes a piece. So what did I do? I found a way to use a drill to replace hand drilling. Now, it took about 5 seconds per piece with much more precision than I could by hand. I could do what I did in a days work before, now in the matter of a few hours. I increased production and got more done on the bottom line. That’s streamlining. Interestingly enough, the manager stopped me from using the drill. They said that wasn’t the way they were instructed to do it. So you want me to hand drill these and take 24 times the amount of time it took me to do one with a drill? Seriously? There was no real technical answer he could give me as to why I should hand drill these. He said: “that is just how it had always been done.” It made no sense. I went back to work and got hand drilling. I couldn’t understand why this mattered. I left the company and found out that a few months later they employed drills to do the work. Imagine the dollars that had been wasted. Months of hand drilling that could have been replaced with drills. Had this company not looked at its processes, it might still be wasting money paying extra workers to hand drill these filters.
As a business owner you need to question everything. Look at your processes, your workers and see if you can find ways to streamline them. Look for innovation, and opportunity. You never know when you will find ways to increase your profits or your bottom line. Simple changes can bring big results. Simply using a drill cut production times drastically. Build a system to make things work more smoothly and faster. You may be leaving extra money on the table without one. Don’t simply trust that your employees will build and do something better. Remember they don’t have skin in the game like you do. They are not an entrepreneur spending their own marbles, they are an employee often just doing their job description.
Where can you streamline your business?
If they don’t fail outright, most businesses fail to fully achieve their potential. That’s because the person who owns the business doesn’t truly know how to build a company that works without him or her.. which is the key. –Michael Gerber
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