Notes
Practical guides to operational excellence, project management, supply chains and digital transformation. Worked examples, real numbers and sources.
- Can AI take over? What the singularity debate gets wrongWhat AI takeover and the singularity mean, what experiments and real incidents show, and how to keep human control as AI agents gain more authority.Digital transformation9 min
- Is AI taking jobs? What the data and history showIs AI taking jobs? Explore employment data, lessons from past automation, and why faster work can mean fewer hires or a busier team.Digital transformation8 min
- 5 Whys example: finding a cause you can testThe team finishes its 5 Whys, retrains the operators, and the failure returns. A manufacturing example of checking the evidence, choosing a corrective action and testing whether it worked. Includes an Excel worksheet.Operational excellence7 min
- AI visual inspection ROI: a worked business caseA pilot reports 98% accuracy. Translate that into missed defects, false alarms and annual cost, then calculate the payback against today's inspection process. Includes an Excel model.Industrial AI7 min
- Benefits realisation: did the automation actually save money?The automation is live and processing time is down. Adjust for volume, separate released capacity from cash, and check the promised benefit against evidence. Includes an Excel review sheet.Digital transformation6 min
- Forecast accuracy: MAPE vs WAPE, with a worked exampleTwo forecasts, two metrics, two different winners. Calculate MAPE, WAPE and bias, check what the averages hide, and use the Excel sheet to review your own demand data.Supply chain7 min
- SMED example: faster changeovers, smaller batchesA changeover falls from 45 to 15 minutes. Use a worked schedule to decide whether the gain should become more output or smaller batches. Includes an Excel comparison sheet.Operational excellence6 min
- Value stream mapping example: 40 minutes of work, 10 days of waitingFollow an order from release to dispatch. Map its work, queues and instructions, then compare speeding up one task with changing the wait between tasks.Operational excellence6 min
- When procurement savings increase total cost: a worked example and supplier comparison sheetA cheaper part saves €200. One late delivery adds €350 in freight. How to compare suppliers, separate a bad outcome from a bad decision, and measure savings across the company.Supply chain7 min
- A project risk register that drives decisions: probability, impact and expected monetary valueHow to write risks people can act on, score them on a probability and impact matrix, turn them into expected monetary value, size a contingency reserve, choose responses (including for opportunities), and use EMV to decide whether a mitigation is worth paying for.Project management7 min
- Change management for digital transformation: using ADKAR and Kotter so people actually adopt the new wayGo-live is not adoption. How Kotter's eight steps and the ADKAR model work together in a transformation program, how to find each team's barrier point, which actions fix which barrier, and how to measure adoption.Digital transformation7 min
- DMAIC step by step: a Lean Six Sigma project from problem to controlA practical walk through Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control on one real-world style problem, with the tools for each phase, the questions to ask at every tollgate, and when DMAIC is the wrong tool.Operational excellence8 min
- Earned value management in plain numbers: CPI, SPI and EAC with one worked exampleEarned value turns "we're roughly on track" into three numbers and two ratios. A worked example on a €200k program: PV, EV, AC, CPI, SPI, the three EAC formulas, TCPI, and why SPI lies near the end.Project management7 min
- FMEA step by step: find what could go wrong before it doesA practical guide to process FMEA: the seven steps, how to rate severity, occurrence and detection, why ranking by RPN can hide your worst risk, how action priority fixes it, and a worked example on an order fulfilment process.Operational excellence8 min
- Hoshin Kanri vs OKRs: turning strategy into what teams do on MondayTwo proven ways to connect strategy to daily work. How Hoshin Kanri cascades a breakthrough objective with catchball and monthly reviews, how OKRs set quarterly stretch goals, one worked example in both, and when to combine them.Operational excellence7 min
- How to read a control chart: common cause, special cause and the rules that matterA control chart tells you when a change in your numbers is real and when it's just noise. How to build an individuals chart by hand, the four Western Electric rules, which chart fits which data, and the mistakes that make charts useless.Operational excellence7 min
- Process capability explained: Cp, Cpk, Pp and Ppk with one worked exampleWhat Cp and Cpk actually measure, how to calculate them by hand, why a process can have a good Cp and a poor Cpk, how Ppk differs, what the common targets mean in defects per million, and the checks to do before trusting any capability number.Operational excellence6 min
- Safety stock and reorder point: the formulas, a worked example, and what service level really costsHow to calculate safety stock and the reorder point step by step, why lead-time variability usually matters more than demand, how cycle service level differs from fill rate, and what each extra point of service costs in inventory.Supply chain7 min
- The critical path method, step by step: a worked example you can copyHow to find the critical path by hand: build the network, run the forward and backward pass, calculate float, and use the result to decide where extra effort actually shortens a project.Project management7 min
- The RACI matrix, done properly: rules, a worked example and how to read it for problemsHow to build a RACI matrix that settles who does what, the rule of one accountable person per task, how to scan rows and columns for bottlenecks and gaps, when to use RASCI, DACI or RAPID instead, and how to run the workshop.Project management5 min
- What to automate first: a scoring model for processes, and when to use RPA, workflows or AI agentsA practical way to choose which processes to automate, score them, pick the right kind of automation (API, workflow, RPA, document AI or an AI agent) and build a business case with a payback period.Digital transformation7 min
- Same OEE, opposite fixes: turning the percentage back into minutesTwo machines can report the same OEE and need completely different work. Here's how I turn the score back into minutes a team can act on.Operational excellence5 min
- Digital transformation that sticks: automate the loop first, then decide what AI may doWhat 50+ automation projects taught me about digital transformation, and a simple four-step ladder for deciding how much to let AI agents do.Digital transformation4 min
- Why busy machines make customers wait: Little's Law and takt time on the floorKeeping every resource busy feels productive and often makes lead times worse. Two simple formulas explain why, and how launch times fell from five months to two.Supply chain5 min
- Did the improvement hold?Most improvement work stops when the fix is agreed. The useful question comes weeks later.Operational excellence2 min
- Three factory habits I use in softwareStandard work, inspection at the station, and readiness before launch.Digital transformation2 min