^The APQC Blog

The Process Excellence Network just came out with an article focusing on six process excellence pitfalls to avoid, written by Andrew Spanyi. 

I’m lucky. I get to work with organizations using benchmarking data and best practices to improve. This also affords me the opportunity to talk to individuals just starting their benchmarking journey. Those that are successful, and see improvement, are those that take benchmarking data and information for what it is and ACT on it. Those that don’t move forward get stuck in details.

Finding good data isn’t hard

On Wednesday, December 4, APQC and the Edison Awards will be hosting a Webinar presentation by Caterpillar Inc. on the development of an innovative product. Randy Peterson, advanced technology development manager for Caterpillar, will be discussing how the organization developed the game-changing 336E H hybrid excavator.

 “Buy-in” is one of those phrases that we hear all the time. We know it’s important, but given time constraints, heavy workloads, and all those other lovely things that come along with managing projects, it’s easy to put it on the backburner in the name of expediency.

The Houston Chronicle recently named its Top Work Places for 2013. APQC was named 21st out of 140 best small organizations to work for based on the results from employee surveys.

APQC recently interviewed Nick Katko, Senior Consultant with BMA Inc., about the challenges a CFO faces when a company decides to use a Lean management system.

Over the past year, an increasing number of stories about companies moving manufacturing operations back to the United States have been making their way into the news. The idea of creating more well-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States and offering products made in the USA has been building momentum for quite some time, and it seems that companies are taking notice of the benefits of re-shoring by turning the idea of doing so into action.

I have been doing a lot of presentations recently focused on benchmarking, and I see a real shift in the mindset of those using benchmarking to improve the performance of their organization.
 

A number of talent management best practices have been revealed again and again in APQC’s human capital management research studies. Five of these tried-and-true talent management best practices include:

Do you agree with experts who say it is difficult for organizations to find supply chain talent that can meet the demands of a complex global economy? As supply chain becomes a more strategic function within the enterprise, managing talent within the supply chain discipline is a critical issue that has become of great interest to senior level executives in many organizations.