The right way to get your modelling upside down
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Haymen Jansen (ABB) and Peter Evans (LEGO) represent two sides of the coin of Continuous Improvement.
As Haymen told us, ‘Process Mining is Process Modelling turned upside down.’ While many businesses operate under the plan-execute-review model, Haymen advocates going into processes that are already up and running, and then analyzing the data to find out what can be improved.
Having a plan is great, Haymen told us, but sometimes it doesn’t survive engagement with the opposition - as in a post-match Albany’s is of a football game, the personalities of players may be as crucial as any strategy, and it’s vital to understand the component parts of a system before expecting it to produce a standardized or predictable outcome.
‘In the end,’ said Haymen, ‘digitalisation of the whole supply chain needs to be done… but standardization is essential: we mustn’t automate chaos!’
Peter took a wider view of the business journey from swamp to base camp to mountain summit: ‘We are in a bigger game than making plastic bricks,’ he told the audience. For Peter, balance in business is about understanding things on the larger scale, and also a personal level: ‘All perspective is individual - we don’t assume that the happy team means everyone in it is happy. All change is situational - what we are delivering is the same but our messages may be different. And our journey is consensual - but we are not all at the same place.’
Hayden had also touched on culture, particularly relevant as culture has been a major factor for delegates the PEX team have spoken to during the conference. ‘Our culture is that we make sure we are all aligned and then we go in the same direction,’ said Hayden. ‘We don’t mind making mistakes, we are a learning organization. As we get more transparency, we see more mistakes - and more opportunities for improvement.’
Peter also proclaimed PEX Europe as the best conference he’d ever attended, though this may be because sponsors Nintex were giving away free socks, and if every galactic hitch-hiker needs to know where their towel is, socks are the 21st century equivalent for the international business traveler.
