Over the last 3 decades there has been an upsurge of new "bottom-upping" methods designed to give major improvements in key operational areas of companies such as in quality and productivity. However in over 99% of companies these have been introduced into an existing old-fashioned "top-down", out of date management system. This has resulted in unattained, lost productivities over 20%, and often over 30%.
EV Management is the new "top-downing" management method to match the new "bottom-upping" methods and is designed to maximise profitability, overall business performance & competitiveness.
EV enables managers for the first time to:
- Obtain a precise picture, using a small number of accurate measures, of your company's performance compared to similar companies anywhere in the World
- Locate what internal opportunities, directly under your own control, exist now in your company to rapidly, in minimum time and with minimum cost produce large improvements in profitability & competitiveness
- Measure exactly what to do and what new skills to add on, in order of priority, to grasp these internal opportunities and much more!
ABBREVIATED CONTENTS LIST
TABLE OF CONTENTS-LIST OF CHAPTERS
Acknowledgements
- Quotations Stimulating Development Of EV Management & Measures
- Two Fundamental Questions The Book Tries To Answer
- Author’s Foreward
Chapter.1 EV Measures
Chapter.2 EV External Drive Strategy
Chapter.3 EV Internal Operational Strategy
Chapter.4 Organisation Structures
Chapter.5 Individual & Team Skills
Chapter.6 Installing EV into Various Types of Companies
Final Comments
Answers to the 2 fundamental questions posed on page.5
PREFACE
The past 20 years haven’t just witnessed changes in local economies they
have seen a global business environment transformed with the migration
of people and jobs on a scale never witnessed before in human history.
The competitor is now no longer in the same city, region or country but
can be an anonymous entity half a world away, never to be met.
Nations that had the recognition for being world leading economic powers
are now among the largest debtor countries struggling to prevent
economic meltdown.
Currencies that may have moved 50 basis points in several years now
experience shifts of this magnitude and larger in a day.
In this chaotic world, business still has to continue, people hired, (if you
can find them) developed, lead and motivated to produce an output
that will sustain an enterprise and allow it to grow.
In the 30 years that I have been involved in company performance development
I have seen dozens of methodologies come and go along
with their much admired gurus and enthusiastic proponent groups who
have surfed the wave as long as it would carry them, always with an eye
for the next popular rising to come forth.
It is fair to say that there are many good points in all of these up-swellings
but none of them could be called a comprehensive management system
and remain a jumble of tools in the kitbag of management methods;
to be dismissed by the cynical and poked at by the curious.
And so it was with time worn reservations that I listened to a presentation
from Dr. Ian Brammar describe the Expanding Value (EV) Management
method for total company management, with the stated intent to create
high value companies, distinguishing the world-class management from
what is termed the conventionally managed organizations.
In so doing Dr, Brammar in making this distinction and demonstrating its
effect has measurably added substance and definition to the oft used
term of “world-class”.
What really sparked my curiosity was the enhanced performance measurement
method that when applied removed the traditional bias of the
external assessor; instead using real numbers from the organization’s financial
records that managers could neither deny or influence by the art
of creative accounting.
This analysis approach develops an unarguable set of management
measures that provide a concrete basis for decision making by the management
team as to where improvement efforts will yield the most significant
results.
Finally a connection had been made between financial performance
measurements and efforts to improve operational performance.
Contrary to the hundreds of measures called for by the assessment intensive
performance development systems the 7 types of EV measures cascaded
through the organization to the shop floor are more effective and
provide more operational control than any of the other systems requiring
dedicated resources.
Because of this, the EV Management system can be applied to the full
scope of business entities; from the multinational Corporation to the small
retailer.
Clearly the research of management processes and systems completed
over the past 20 years has drawn on many of the ideas that have gone
before, including Japanese management systems for which the west has
only seen the tip of the iceberg but this research has gone further; to
tackle the language of management!
To talk about people productivity in a staff situation is at best challenging
and at worst confrontational. Productivity is currently a popular topic of
analysis for Governments, particularly in the Western world, but while
there are a plethora of initiatives to lift national output the real numbers
indicate stubborn resistance to these interventions.
Learning from the Toyota Production System and work done by the Tavistock
Institute in the United Kingdom, Dr Brammar has developed an approach
that helps a manager and operator look at work performed in
two components: percentage of time spent adding value verses percentage
of time where no value has been added.
This framework of thinking and the actions that flow there from help operator
and management thinking become more closely aligned with
operational measures flowing directly upward into financial measures
and the reporting system.
The focus of the team becomes, increasing the percentage value
added through affirmative action; workplace design, investments in training
and plant, product redesign and considering perhaps the hardest
question, “should we be doing this job in the first place?” All issues highly
relevant in a labour market under pressure.
As you read this scholarly work you will be struck with the simplicity of
many of the concepts and their application and will ask is there not
more? The clear answer is Yes: there is a lot more but frankly there is sufficient
here for the enquiring and the thoughtful to see that growing; expanding
the value of their business is neither beyond them nor requires a
college degree, nor large capital expenditure but requires a willingness
and sense of adventure to break out of the narrow introspective thinking
that obscures opportunity, to another pathway for increasing the value of
their organization and use of time.
If Governments, industry groups, regional business development providers
and enterprises large and small could appreciate that the power to expand
value and personal wealth lies within their current organization, fear
of globalization, the competitor or any other market force would become
a minor irritation.
This is therefore a call to action, one that will be both personally rewarding
and good for the community in which you live.
I commend thoughtful reading of this book and prompt action to understand
and apply its direction.
David A Penny, Managing Director, Ship Projects New Zealand
Managing Director, BPDS (NZ) Limited