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Did You Know...?
That Value Analysis Was Developed Back In the 1940's After World War II as a Way to Find Lower Cost but Higher Quality Alternative products and methods. This was Due to the Lack of Material Resources At The End of The War.
Savings Beyond Price -Weekly E-Zine- September 13, 2006
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Robert T.
Yokl
President & Chief Value Strategist
Greetings!
Small Incremental Improvements Aren’t Good Enough!
I hear that healthcare organizations are celebrating savings improvements of 3% on a commodity group and calling it a good day. Let me tell you that this type of small incremental improvement isn’t good enough in this marketplace today.
In fact, don’t even think about breaking out the Champagne until you have saved 12%, 16% or even 26% on any given commodity group you are buying.
Why? With healthcare organization’s inflation projected to be 4.2% this year it would cancel out all of those small savings you are making this year. The creative energy and resources that you are expending to achieve these small savings could be better invested in targeting big savings opportunities that really do matter.
With this said, to make big savings happen for your healthcare organization each year you need to strategically plan your savings targets by utilizing a technique I call “360 degree” benchmarking. With this technique you would be leaving no big, huge or gigantic savings targets left untouched!
So don’t fuss with the small stuff, when there are much much bigger saving targets to be addressed at your healthcare organization.Your Partner in Supply Chain Savings,
Robert T. Yokl
President & Chief Value Strategist
Finding Your Innovation Beat, Tempo And Rhythm Can Improve Your Search For New Savings And Quality Ideas 10-Fold!
“Most Savings And Quality Ideas Are Uninspired, Impractical or Too Costly, But They Don’t Need To Be That Way.”
Most value teams generate their savings and quality improvements by making some minor changes in the current version of the product, service or technology (PS&T) that they are evaluating, i.e. dropping a feature of a product or streamlining a custom kit to save a few dollars.
This isn’t Innovation! This is what I call “imitation”, because this is what every healthcare organization in the county is doing to save money and improve quality. It’s uninspired, bland, boring and dull!
What is needed for real innovation to happen is for value teams to employ “systematic inventive thinking” so they can hit their innovative beat, tempo and rhythm which will naturally bring about clever, ingenious, inspired and imaginative new savings and quality ideas.
This type of “systematic inventive thinking” doesn’t start with the “voice of the customer” (what they say they want, need or desire), but starts with the voice of the PS&T. You begin by listing the PS&T’s functions, attributes and characteristics, and then following one of the classic innovative systems (e.g., Six Sigma or LEAN Management) you then manipulate these elements to come up with something new.
Your goal in utilizing “systematic inventive thinking” is to liberate your value team(s) from the misconceptions, misdirections and assumptions that your customers hold as sacred and to free them from the strong influence of sales representatives in order to generate a whole new landscape of savings and quality ideas.
This is a new way of thinking about your products, services and technology’s purchases instead of recycling ideas that are now worn, tired and passé’. This will increase your savings and quality ideas by 10- fold.
DID YOU KNOW…
That Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve an organization’s operational performance by identifying and eliminating "defects" (what our customers don’t want) in products, services and processes.
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