Improvement Insights Blog
SSOI – Simplify, Streamline, Optimize and Innovate
The best approach I’ve found to ongoing improvement and innovation. Use SSOI-the Agile Process Innovation methodology.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Agile Process Innovation: Hacking Lean And Six Sigma For Maximum Results.”
“Now in here I describe my process and I’ll call it “soy”: S.S.O.I. which stands for “Simplify, Streamline, Optimize and Innovate.”
“Now to Simplify, what do we use: 5S. Go clean all the debris and stuff that’s collected over the years and get all that junk out of the way.
“After we Simplify, we Streamline, so we use Value Stream Maps and Spaghetti Diagrams to figure out how to simplify flows, connect them better so we get rid of all the delays that are slowing us down and slowing down customers and making them unhappy, right? We don’t want to do that.
“Simplify, Streamline, then Optimize: we can use the tools of Six Sigma to get into the data and really figure out exactly where things are going wrong and fix the stuff that’s going wrong so it stops going wrong forever.
“Simplify, Streamline, Optimize… now you may have to do that repeatedly, but at some point, things get simple, streamlined and optimized enough that you get an idea about how to Innovate how your business works. At that point you can [say] “Oh, we could do it this way and it’d be wicked faster, better, cheaper, happier for customers.” This is the idea.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Adopt some “soy” in your business (and it’s not that… vegan stuff). SSOI. Let’s create a hassle-free America; hassle-free healthcare. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
