Ways to Improve Quality, Productivity & Process Time

Achieving high productivity in small businesses typically involves getting the most out of limited resources, such as your current staff or available equipment. A challenge to business owners is to discover ways to increase productivity while maintaining high levels of quality. A variety of methods are available to accomplish this, including motivating and empowering your workers and streamlining production processes, or even changing them if necessary.

Empower Workers to Give Recommendations

Your workers are the ones who are immersed in your production processes on a daily basis, so empower them to develop ideas for improvement. Let your workers detail their work activities and perform an analysis. Once they take a closer look at how they spend their time, they can recommend ways to perform a process faster and eliminate waste. Another thing to consider is that workers who feel empowered are more likely demonstrate increased productivity.

Eliminate Valueless Processes

One-third to two-thirds of employee tasks may be unnecessary or add little or no value. Some workers may perform overlapping or repetitive tasks, which decreases overall productivity. Talk to your team and analyze your work processes to eliminate needless tasks like redoing, re-entering or re-testing. Consider investing in collaboration software that makes it easy for team members to interact and offer up real-time reporting on processes that need to be evaluated.

Improve Employee Training

Inadequate training may be the cause of substandard quality of your products and can also adversely affect production time. Investing in proper training for new hires can eliminate costly mistakes and ensure that the work is done right the first time. This can also reduce the need for quality control procedures and improve the overall speed of your production process. Consider designating one person as a trainer, preferably someone with experience and expertise in your production process.

Establish Productivity and Quality Goals

Establish productivity and quality goals and tie them to incentives. Goals can help your workers stay focused, which can increase speed or eliminate errors. Goals should be specific and measurable, such as increasing worker production by five units per day while maintaining a 98-percent quality standard. Incentives for reaching the goals could include money, time off or recognition.

Implement Gradual Changes

If you need to make changes in your production processes, implement them gradually, such as changing one aspect of the process at a time. Rapid wholesale changes may frustrate your employees or cause them to fear that they won’t be able to adapt. An abrupt change can also significantly reduce productivity because of the effect of the learning curve.