Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/442406
BY MOE GLENNER GENESIS OF INNOVATI N I t's a new year with new opportunities beckoning. Every company and especially all of us in the logistics arena look for these new opportunities. Whether it is a new way to tackle existing issues, a new way to develop business or even a new avenue to explore, we are looking for innovations to help propel us forward. But where does innovation come from? Some will advocate that it's the net product of ideation and/or creative effort. Others may argue that it is (or at least, should be) the continuous outflow of a systematic and cultural personal and/or organizational effort. My personal belief rests with a combination of the two. But what if there was an established tool that anyone could use to focus their efforts toward where they might find innovation? While skeptics might scoff at the notion of such a tool, instead relying on process, procedure and systems, what if there was really such a tool? ose of us schooled and/or exposed to Lean or Six Sigma are intimately familiar with Ishikawa and his cause-and-effect diagram to expose root problems. Otherwise, known as the fishbone diagram, it doesn't require a great deal of knowledge or complex handling to achieve results. We previously examined Ishikawa but in the more traditional role. What if we substituted "Problem" for "Focus of Innovative Effort" or simply "Innovation"? Could such an established and widely-used tool successfully lead to innovation? I propose that it both can and will, so let's take a closer look. e beauty and utility of Ishikawa's work is that the headers can be substituted for any other appropriate category and that it doesn't necessarily have to follow a particular order. For the sake of this exercise, I'll use the traditional 5 M + E formula (Man, Material, Machine, Measurement, Method & Environment) to discover potential innovative focus in a typical office setting. Materials Methods Machines Measurements Enviroment People Problem Time . . . W H AT I F T H E R E WA S A N E S T A B L I S H E D T O O L T H AT A N Y O N E C O U L D U S E T O F O C U S T H E I R E F F O R T S T O WA R D W H E R E T H E Y M I G H T F I N D I N N O VAT I O N ? " " 10 IT MAGAZINE Vo l . 9 , N o . 1