Research & Development

When it comes to solving problems in your organization, what is the most valuable and resourceful way to do it? Well, if you are heading up the operation, the owner, all you have to do is say what youexpect. Your decision is unquestioned and everyone has to do what you want. But are you sure that the choice you made is the best possible answer to your problem? Is the answerconclusion that you came up with what will resolve the question or just delay the unavoidable? Is only getting the view or input from one employee the very best way to go about solving a problem or is it better to get a judgment and thoughts from many individuals? Of course, a problem can better be resolved and identified with many people working on it. When various ideas and varying perspectives are looked through, the simpler it is to come up with new ideas. The combined comprehension and worldview and experience of numerous different workers is much broader and much more wide ranging than if it is restricted to just one individual. That person may have a lot of skill and be extremely educated, but when you gain access to many thoughts and multiple ideas, you are almost always more likely to get a favorable result.

This grouping of people, this group that you choose to assemble will need some assistance getting started. Who is best to put on your team? It is always going to be slightly different and for each situation you may want to have another group leader. You want your leader to be someone that all members can get behind and that everybody respects. You also require them to be competent about what they are looking at and if they are valued and liked by the rest of the team, then more than likely they are all of the above. This group is going to be in charge of for a large undertaking and they will be looked at to solve the situation and do it as capably and cost effective as possible. You will want somebody on the team that has skill working with these types of teams and has knowledge with groups and lean manufacturing in general. You will also want team members that are varied in their job duties and are up and down the management ladder. You do not want a team that is strictly comprised of upper management or only employees on the floor. If you do this, then you will not get the thoughts and the varying perspectives that you need. The more viewpoints that you entertain, the more chance that you will get an proposal or point of view that you weren’t expecting and that might be innovative to everybody on the team. The ideas that come from a team can often be a mixture of ideas that come from the whole group. Often, the final product is a mix of all of the ideas that has come before it, but fleshes out the thoughts more fully.