I started XONITEK in August of 1985 in Endicott, New York.  I still own its latest incarnation, now located in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Having owned my own businesses for the last 40 years makes me uniquely unemployable.  Perhaps that could change given the right circumstances (whatever those might be). Since the very beginning, the purpose of...

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Headline: “Business Metrics Gone Awry: The Dark Side of Relying Solely on KPIs” Subheading: “Corporate Missteps Highlight the Pitfalls of Blindly Chasing Key Performance Indicators” We read about it all the time; in a shocking turn of events, the business world is abuzz with meteoric fall of some company and its CEO, its CFO, or...

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I wrote an article entitled “The Strategic HR Department” where I shared my thoughts on the characteristics of a Human Resources Department that is strategic with a purpose of being an accelerant of the organization’s ambitions rather than one that is a bureaucracy whose emphasis is on compliance. Of course, compliance is an important responsibility...

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Several years ago I was at an Operational Excellence Conference here in Frankfurt.  As with most talks, the speaker started by introducing the company he worked for and what it did.  He then proceeded to list the companies values, of which there were five or so. The last value on the list was “Safety” to...

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In my book, “State of Readiness” is a brief discussion on “Effects Chains” (pgs 271-277); which is really a re-branding (for purposes of sensibilities) of “kill chains” that I borrowed from military parlance and adapted to business. In the context of the military, a kill chain refers to a series of stages or steps that...

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I have been in business, running a consultancy (XONITEK) since 1985.  Besides it making me uniquely unemployable, I have had the opportunity to observe and interact with the many incarnations and varieties of Human Resource (HR) Departments at countless clients over the course of years. Marking our calendars, today is April 10th, 2023.  And to...

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The COVID years of 2020 and 2021 notwithstanding, the subject of “culture change” has been a topic at many (if not all) conferences on Operational Excellence and Continuous Improvement that I have attended over the past several years.  But the conversation always seems to gravitate towards the “how”whenever the subject comes up, with little attention...

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It was the spring of 1995 and my firm (XONITEK) was one of the top implementers of Macola Software’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.  We were the very top when it came to implementing in a manufacturing environment.  As such, I was invited to Macola’s summit to share my views on the future direction of...

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly impact the field of continuous improvement by providing organizations with new tools and techniques to identify and eliminate waste and improve performance.  Some ways that AI can be used in continuous improvement include: It is worth mentioning that AI is not a silver bullet, the success of...

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I produce three podcasts.  What started as just a little bit more than a hobby has developed into a few platforms that serve a variety of interests; each unique from the other, but all related in that they are all about business and business goings-on. The longest-running podcast that I produce is “The Outliers Inn”...

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I was the Chairman at a three-day conference on Operational Excellence and Business Transformation recently and was really impressed by the number of people in attendance and the caliber of the speakers. Some of the speakers discussed technology, and their vision of the future.  But most of the speakers focused on softer skills; leadership, innovation,...

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I was in Denver recently and started chatting with people at the bar (as I am apt to do, from time to time).  Regardless of what it might sound like, I meet some rather interesting folks (who are fellow road-warriors like me) and I strike-up some even more interesting conversations. On this particular occasion, I...

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Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory and manufacturing systems are management strategies where replenishment orders of raw materials, assemblies, and finished goods are based on production schedules; which themselves are based on real customer orders that are due at specific dates (even times).  The objective is to increase efficiency and effectiveness by decreasing the waste associated with carrying...

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These approaches can also be applied to Continuous Improvement, Lean, or Six Sigma Programs. I started my first business, XONITEK, in August of 1985.   I still own its latest incarnation located in Jackson Wyoming.  Having owned my own businesses for the last 37 years makes me uniquely unemployable.  Perhaps that could change given the right...

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Like many consultants, I travel quite a bit and spend a fair bit of time at airports as a result.  And since I live in Germany and my clients are (mostly) in Europe and in the States, my most popular route (once a month on average) is flying United Airlines between Frankfurt (FRA) and Newark...

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Summary; Most companies preparing to launch an Operational Excellence Program do not take a moment to contemplate what their program is hoping to achieve, or even if what they are hoping to achieve is what the company truly needs. These 9 Questions, asked of all the right people, help to get your program properly aligned...

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A key to success in any Operational Excellence or Continuous Improvement program will be found in the way opportunities for improvement are harvested and prioritized; and how well the projects are managed and evaluated. I have written several articles over the past few years on what it takes to successfully design and deploy an Operational...

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Introduction Did you ever look at a video clip, or a sound bite, or a picture and it made you uneasy; but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it?  Chances are that it made you uneasy because it wasn’t real.  Rather, it was intended to make you believe it was real; to fool you. ...

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This article is a last of a series about a turn-around engagement I had in 2021.  Come along for a real life business story of The Peter Principle and/or The Dunning-Kruger Effect in action. The story goes like this… From the outside, even on the surface, the company looked successful.  But by the time I...

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Earlier this year I shared a tale of woe.  One of my long-term clients had suffered a ransomware attack due mostly to the negligence of the business leadership to be respectful of the need to maintain their information technology infrastructure and be vigilant against external threats from bad actors (along with internal threats from system...

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Back in the middle of 2017, as Tesla was ramping up the production of the Model-3 and the company was worth only $63.5 billion (as opposed to $1 trillion today), Elon Musk famously stated that he was entering “Production Hell“.  Evidently, he made it through just fine. But people reading this might think; “Isn’t Musk...

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I recently came off a project with a metal fabrication company that was in severe distress. I was originally introduced to the company in October of 2020 by a mentor of the owner who thought they could use my help.  At the time, the owner believed he had the situation under control; he did not. ...

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I had a project where I was hired to try to help turn a company around.  The challenges faced existed across the entirety of the company.  In fact, there was no function of the company that was operating at an acceptable level.  This company was very sick. The owner of the company and I made...

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We have all been there at least once in our lives.  It might be that we are faced with a single, big, fat, hairy challenge and we don’t know where to start.  Or it might be that we are faced with several challenges at once; each one not particularly overwhelming, but together are; with each...

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Employers don’t hire people – or assign them a project or task – in the hopes they will fail.  And employees don’t take on a job, project, or task in the hopes they will fail.  On the contraire, the expectations all around are that the outcome will be successful. Certainly, sometimes the outcomes are not...

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I recently landed at Newark Airport and when I turned my mobile phone on, it caught on fire.  Not the kind of fire with flames and sparks shooting out of it.  Rather, one of my clients got infected by ransomware whilst I was in the air – and there was panic in the dozens of...

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It’s January 2020.  I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications.  I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their...

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There is a saying, rather a curse; “May you live in interesting times”.  It is a curse because interesting times are times that are full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity; interesting times are VUCA times; disruptive, chaotic, and transformative. Whereas life in uninteresting times is predicable, rote, even boring. We are living in interesting...

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There was a recent post in the Operational Excellence Group that I own on LinkedIn.  The post was about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lean Six Sigma program and the benefits that were realized.  The person who created the post was rather excited that the program had saved NASA $1.3 million. Reading this...

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Life is a never-ending stream of decisions.  From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we are making decisions.  Even the very act of waking up and going to sleep is a decision.  After all, we don’t have to wake up or go to sleep; we make...

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