Andy Sheppard shares an article on the 5 Cs of operations improvement. Workers can often feel that their efforts to change are not being appreciated. This tends to be perpetuated if managers have been tasked with the default priority of reducing costs. Furthermore, mixed track records with such cost-reduction initiatives means people throughout an organisation can start to ask “what has operations improvement ever done for us?” This evokes a classic line in British comedy. In the Life of Brian,…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Jonathan Schwartz with Schwartz Consulting. Jonathan leads performance improvement strategy and execution efforts and manages large, complex programs/projects in manufacturing, distribution, and service operations. Since leaving McKinsey as an Engagement Manager, he has led operations improvements, lean implementations, and large programs/projects at several manufacturing companies, Bank of America, a tech start-up, a healthcare communications firm, etc. He often works with private equity portfolio companies and was a VP and Lean Champion at American Capital. Prior…

  Tobias Baer explains why the second-order effects of the disruption caused by the Coronavirus are what should concern risk managers the most. For risk managers, Covid-19 is both scary and a real-life test of our approach to risk management. As we are grappling with the virus and its fall-out, there are three sets of issues: the threat of the virus itself; the panic that it has caused; and lessons for operational risk management. The risk of the virus itself…