• The Power of Process Optimums (Defining Opportunity – (Why Budget is the Wrong Number, Strategies for Selecting Optimum Values, Using Optimums to Achieve Culture Change, Exercise)
  
  
• Connecting Dollars to Problems – Valuing Improvement Opportunities – (Cost of Quality, Lost Margin, Why Employees Need to Know About COQ, Exercise)
  
  
• Engineering’s Role in Building Partnerships and Driving Culture Change – (Unintentional Barriers, Source of Barriers, Case Studies – Expectations Drive Behavior, Behavior Drives Performance, Exercise)

In thoroughbred racing, one horse must win three designated races to win the Triple Crown. In continuous improvement, it takes three steps to maximize and sustain the value delivered by improvement initiatives:

• Identify hidden opportunities to improve productivity
• Prioritize these opportunities by financial impact
• Incorporate these learnings into the management system to build a budget that is achievable, prevent approval of unneeded expansion capital and help drive culture change.

This session will cover the following topics, including real life client examples of successes and failures:

• Setting Optimums for Mobile Equipment and Fixed Plant Processes.
• Methodology for Valuing Recurring Problems as Lost Opportunities.
• Tying optimums and valuation to the Management System to optimize expansion capital placement and avoid unachievable budget goals. • Driving Culture Change with the “Triple Crown”.

SOPs focus on a myriad of operator duties and provide a step-by-step guide to safe equipment start-ups and shutdowns, procurement of supplies, etc. However, an operator may not know when a process control limit is being reached or will make on-the-spot decisions to fix an out-of-control event based on experience level and training. As a result, the total cost of an event can vary greatly (equipment damage, lost production, excess costs) based on who’s working when an event occurs.

Control and Response plans fill the void often left by SOPs by providing consistent information to operators about process control limits and optimum response steps to out-of-control events. This paper will contain an overview of these plans, discuss the value gained when these plans are incorporated into process documentation, and reveal linkages to ISO-9001/14001 that support compliance for ISO certifications.