What is value?
When asked – what do you value? Certain things spring immediately to mind. Time with our family, our home, friendships or perhaps even particularly meaningful possessions. It’s fair to say that, from a personal perspective, most of us find it easy to separate the things we value from those we don’t.
In business the answers are often not so clear. Yet in these challenging times, for both the manufacturing and service sectors, understanding the true nature of value has never been more important.
So what do we mean by value in this context?
Let’s start by stating what we don’t mean. Value is not about making money, increasing your share price or keeping the boss happy. It not about how much time you can save or how much more you can charge for what you produce. In fact value is not about you at all. It’s about your customers. It’s the reason they do business with you and it’s the reason they stay.
In a today’s rapidly changing world organisations must continually adapt to ensure they meet the needs of their customers. Unfortunately too many wait until a customer is unhappy and at the point changing provider before they ask ‘what can we do better?’
Embed a culture of continuous improvement within your organisation and you’ll be able to identify what you are doing well and what your are doing not so well. Then, through an iterative process of testing and correcting errors, you’ll improve your products or service and, in turn, create more customer value. Giving you a competitive advantage and growing your market share.
Design professional Des Kennedy and Gavin Jones a Lean expert have come together to demonstrate how this way of thinking can transform your company’s fortunes.
In a presentation called ‘Value by design’. They combine best practice from Lean and Design Thinking into a simple yet powerful approach that is the foundation of all well designed products and services. They’ll demonstrate how, by using a ‘learning cycle’, you can develop and evaluate ideas quickly and align them to real customer needs.
The 45 minute session includes case studies and hands-on demonstrations as well as a free set of actionable resources that you can start using straight away.
This free session is designed for businesses leaders and managers across all sectors who are interested in becoming more successful through validated learning.
If you’d like to book this session for you and your colleagues contact Des Kennedy or Gavin Jones for more information.
Gavin Jones
An experienced improvement specialist Gavin has a track record of delivering successful change programmes at all levels. A business leader and Lean Six- Sigma master black belt (MBB), he works across manufacturing, engineering, supply chain, transactional and service environments.
Gavin has worked in the automotive, aerospace and marine sectors in Asia, USA and Europe. He combines leadership and diagnostic skills to deliver scalable, sustainable, pragmatic solutions to a range of businesses challenges including efficiency, growth or cost reduction.
He has over 20 years experience in improvement programmes from shop floor to boardroom in companies such as Rolls-Royce Aerospace and Land Rover. As well as a MBA from Warwick Business School and BEng in Mechanical Engineering (CEng).
Des Kennedy
Managing Director of strategic design company Infinite. Des has over 30 years experience working with clients across the UK. A strategic thinker with expertise in branding, marketing and software development. He has delivered transformational projects in both the public and private sector for clients such as NHS, The National Trust, Sue Ryder, Fenwick and EDMI.
Des and his team are currently working in higher education, healthcare and manufacturing. Designing, developing and deploying solutions that deliver real customer value and a tangible return on investment.