1. Maintain documented standards, internal and process controls.
2. Maintain operating procedures and update at least annually.
3. Continually evaluate tooling, equipment, facility, supplies, and training.
4. Include monitoring environmental factors (industry organizations, legal, technological and cultural) in everyone’s performance goals.
5. Consider cross pollination between workgroups, industries, technologies, organization and cultures.
6. Maintain surveillance on technological innovations.
7. Resist technology (any) changes for the sake of change. Verify cost benefit analysis. But always document ideas and concepts for future use. Good ideas do not always have good timing.
8. Develop open culture to receive and distribute best practices between work groups and locations. Cherry picking ideas is OK.
9. Continuous improvement, there is always a better way, limited only by technology, budget and schedule.
10. Maintain flexibility and establish action levels for process changes.
11. Develop a change management culture. (Open communication channels.)
12. Resist hire and forget for new employees. Don’t assume all employees were cut from the same mold. Follow up to ensure employees adapt to the organization’s nomenclature, processes and culture.
13. Encourage fresh eyes to question every aspect of your organization. Some question may have been asked before, but check the current environment to determine if now adoption in part or whole is possible.
14. Have freewheeling discussions and debates/ brain storming sessions.
15. Analytics do not make decisions, management must consider environmental factors outside the numbers and understand the variability of data and hazards of projecting blindly based on an analytical model.

For a learning curve to actually work, management must be actively engaged to ensure goals are met. Expecting a learning curve effect without active management often le4ads to undesirable outcomes.

I’ve been a avid reader of your blog since a month ago when I discovered it. I like the way you are presenting things, connecting the dots and therefore making parallel that are not always seen at first glance.

Thanks for your valuable insight.

Andy