It’s been a long time coming but we are beyond excited to announce that you can now add form fields to your process checklists in Process Street.
Check out the short video below for an intro to forms.
Form fields allow you to collect and store important data within set fields in your checklists.
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Pinch analysis is a difficult topic to talk about, as it both has widely applicable techniques which can reduce the need for external resources, but it’s traditionally very complicated and used in a limited business sector.
That’s why today I’ll be breaking down the topic and showing how the principles behind it can be used across any and all disciplines.
You don’t have to be a thermodynamics buff to understand this; it all comes down to analyzing what you have, what by-products your processes create, and whether you can use those by-products to your advantage.
By doing this, traditional pinch analysis is able to typically result in energy savings of 10-35% – that’s a third less energy you need to generate or import to carry out your processes.
Lets’ get stuck in.
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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.
Whether it’s Coke vs Pepsi, Ariel vs Persil or Hawaiian pizza vs everything good in the world, rivalries are everywhere. They make for fantastic spectator sports and can help improve our lives by showing the flaws in each side.
In our efforts to help you guys automate as much of the laborious shovel work in your lives as possible, we came across two main competitors; the great battle that is Zapier vs IFTTT.
Okay, so maybe “battle” is over-dramatizing things a little; it’s not as if they’re running massive smear campaigns. Still, the competition is real, as both Zapier and IFTTT have earned their spots on the map for being darned good pieces of kit. This got us thinking; which is better?
No matter how foolproof you think your operations are, human error will always pose a threat. Heck, it’s already responsible for 52% of security and data breaches, was the root cause of a host of famous tragedies, and can strike at any time.
But what exactly is human error, and how can we limit its effects if it can’t be completely prevented?
To answer that question, we here at Process Street have broken it down for you. In this article, you’ll learn:
It’s time to stop leaving your success open to random chances of failure.
Have you ever had a project which never seems to end? One which you either underestimated or kept adding tasks to as you went along?
That’s exactly what setting out your project scope will prevent.
By analyzing the elements of your projects before starting, you can set out the scope of the work in order to prevent extra work getting added (without adjusting the necessary resources) and avoid taking on projects too large for your team to handle.
Not to mention that the principles behind project scope can be applied elsewhere in your business too.
“I call this the Scopi-locks principle.
Don’t make your product too big, because no-one will adopt it. Don’t make your product too small, because it’s not worth adopting. You have to [get it] just right such that it’s worth poor people pulling it into their lives and, when they do, that they get some value out of it.” – Des Traynor (co-founder of Intercom) on product scope
Let’s get stuck right in with project scope by breaking down what it is, what you need to know before creating it, and how to use it in action.
The Ford Production System paved the way for most modern lean manufacturing, and the best physical embodiment of it was the Willow Run B-24 bomber production facility in WWII.
After intervention from Ford, Willow Run was able to go from producing one bomber per day to one per hour. That’s 24x their original output.
At the heart of the facility stood the “pacing clock”. This monitored what we now call takt time.
Takt time is the pulse of your operations – the rhythm and rate by which tasks and products are completed. By monitoring and setting guidelines for this single figure, Ford (and company) was able to build a facility which could produce the same as half of the entire German aircraft industry.
That’s why today we’ll be breaking down what takt time is, how to calculate it, and how it can be used in almost any system to reliably track your progress and provide an early warning system for any problems you encounter.
Let’s get started!
In a study of 400 businesses in the UK and US, global analyst firm IDC established that 23% of employees don’t understand a core part of their job. Combined with the potential damage that human error can cause, it’s easy to see why it’s important to make sure that your processes are being followed to the letter.
Still, nobody enjoys hearing the term “ensure compliance” when it comes to their team. It’s cold, impersonal, and conjures up images of school students being sent to detention or prisoners under strict watch, and if your team feels the same then their morale will quickly plummet.
Here at Process Street, we’re well versed in the problems with documenting, managing, and deploying your processes. That’s why this post will take care of those compliance problems by giving you some killer tips to make sure your team sticks to their methods without alienating them with harsh policies.
Let’s dive right in!
“About half of all the activities people are paid to do in the world’s workforce could potentially be automated” – McKinsey Global Institute, Harnessing automation for a future that works
For many, enterprise automation is a complex and scary topic. Many team leaders believe that it takes too much work to set up your automated systems, and a huge number of people are worried that doing so will let robots take over their jobs.
It’s not true.
Those who understand automation for what it is – a powerful tool which lets your team massively increase their value output – quickly find themselves ahead of the curve. Using it lets you quickly and accurately hand off all of your menial tasks so that everyone can focus on more important items.
Here at Process Street, we know how difficult it can be to get started with enterprise automation. That’s why this post will take you through:
It’s not complex, it’s not scary, and it certainly won’t be putting your team out of a job. If anything, automation is entirely designed around letting people perform their jobs better than ever before.
It’s time to join the newest revolution in enterprise efficiency and accuracy.
Dodson Property Management is a Richmond-based property management company which uses Process Street to track the progress of everything from recruitment and onboarding to managing tenants and creating monthly reports for their landlords. This lets them make sure that their processes are carried out accurately and reliably, even when their team is on the go.
We spoke to their Vice President of Single Family Management, RMP, and MPM Tim Wehner about how they use Process Street in their business.
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“Why didn’t they see this coming?”
I had just learned of yet another company catastrophically failing to understand their audience. Who thought it would be a good idea to host an AMA after your company was involved in one of the biggest financial scandals in modern history?
Then it hit me. Every team makes silly mistakes. It’s all down to forgetting to ask yourself some basic marketing questions.
While this post was originally going to be reviewing Getting Goosebumps by Bryan Adams and Dave Hazlehurst, the examples and theories they pose in that book (which is well worth a read) are perfect for demonstrating how easy it can be to avoid marketing disasters. All you have to do is keep asking these questions to form a coherent strategy with no nasty surprises.
But enough rambling – it’s time to learn how to avoid marketing disasters!
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