Redefining quality is about creating a “learning organisation” that is quick to change, avoids excessive costs and the reputational impacts of getting it wrong.

Why is Reducing Costs Important?

The answer to the question seems obvious, now more than ever, there is continuous downward pressure on costs. This ensures private sector companies remain competitive and public sector companies can deliver crucial services with fewer resources. Oakland employs its experience and expertise to help change programmes reduce the cost of delivering products and services without damaging their quality.

As the journey progresses costs accumulate. The rate increases early in the journey and slows as maturity is increased.

Cost related risks

• Costs get out of control due to poor quality through inadequate specification, excessive rework, or too much waste
• Hidden costs don’t get addressed because they don’t feature in financial reports, because they are hard to identify
• Carbon emissions cost money – under the Carbon Reduction Commitment many companies will start being penalised for carbon emissions

How to go about Reducing Costs

Like an iceberg, many of the costs to deliver products and services are above the water, easy to spot and relatively easy to avoid or minimise. Really successful organisations have founds ways to address the hidden causes of cost, below the water line such as: rework, complaint handling, process delays and errors. Three ways of addressing cost:

• Reduce process time – apply approaches such as “Lean” to remove the non-value adding waste from a process, pathway or service
• Reduce variation – use techniques such as “Six-Sigma” to reduce undesirable variation in patient facing and back-office processes
• Bust assumptions – busting assumptions can lead to a paradigm shift in the way things are done – this could drastically reduce costs and create a step change in quality

To contact an expert in Reducing Costs for immediate help or further information, please contact us or telephone: +44 (0)113 234 1944