GE's "Work Out" for Process Improvement

Along with Six Sigma, General Electric developed a much simpler approach to process improvement called "Work Out".

There's even an entire book devoted to the subject - "The GE Work-Out" by Dave Ulrich and two other authors. Whether the topic deserves an entire book is a question I'll leave to the reader, but the approach is straighforward and the results can be quite stunning.

FourThought Partners has used this approach and found that the investment to perform this methodology is quite low, and the return large.

Essentially, the consultant/facilitator does the classic consultant cliche - borrowing the client's watch to tell him what time it is. In a very structured way, your people are brought together for a couple of brainstorming sessions and some "quick and dirty" ROI calculation sessions. The ideas that survive this process are brought to management in an unusually rapid process for go/no-go decisions, and the team is challenged to start producing results in weeks rather than months or longer.

Both "low hanging fruit" and benefits that take longer to realize are identified and acted upon without a lot of bureaucracy, and the teams involved are encouraged by the process to continue thinking about even more improvement. It's a satisfying experience that even those with short attention spans will appreciate!

If you are interested in learning more about GE Work-out, and want to determine whether FourThought Partners can help you implement it, please contact us.