Beatriz Muñoz-Seca

Knowledge and Problem Solving

In this chapter, we outline the basic concepts which underpin the rest of the book. We start by giving a working definition of knowledge which we can use to establish the starting point for our subsequent discussion. After having described the mechanisms for problem solving, we give several different classifications of knowledge. This chapter is necessarily rather abstract, with little relation to business reality. To rectify this, Chapter 3 gives a first business application of the concepts developed here.

Quality and Service

A precedent of some of the ideas discussed in this book is to be found in the concepts of quality. Therefore, it is only fair that we establish this dependence in this chapter.

Asking the Right Question at the Right Time, Asking for Relevant Information: SPDM Express

Well, we have now reached the last chapter. I shall suggest an “express” way to implement SPDM. Why? There are two scenarios. First, that you have never considered topics such as the ones in this book and that you want to implement them quickly to assess their effect on the service. Second, that you have already undertaken lean-type action or process improvement, and you want to glimpse SPDM’s potential in a quick version that makes it easy to assess whatever impact it may have. Whatever your scenario, any manager will surely need to understand what is happening in their service’s operations. You cannot afford to not ask “the right question at the right time, while asking for relevant information.”

Cost-Cutting Does Not Lead to Efficiency, but Efficiency Does Lead to Cost-Cutting

We shall devote this chapter to conveying some essential ideas about capacity analysis. In the previous chapter, we introduced the six action variables for Operations and gave an overview of each one. Nonetheless, we have tiptoed over capacity, for the simple reason that I believe it is worth a full chapter. I do not know how to perform operational analysis without delving into capacity. Using the latter I can tackle a company’s entire operations layer. Without it, I am lost. In this chapter I introduce capacity analysis as an essential way of looking for operational efficiency. I go back to KISS for this chapter’s approach.

Making Ideas Happen

We shall continue to tackle the design of operational structure. In the previous chapter we focused on service design. Now it is time to operationally structure how to implement it.

Have You Looked to See What Is in Your Refrigerator Yet

We have always tried to understand what patients and their families need. They come here totally helpless, at the mercy of whatever we say. Often when you face a service being provided, you don’t know what you really want. And on top of that there’s the stress in the situation. We are the ones that have to guess their needs and see how to offer the best treatment. The patient isn’t just the baby, but the whole family.” The head of the Neonatal Unit at the 12 de Octubre Hospital, in Madrid, spoke these words to me (Munoz-Seca, 2012). From that moment on, I found that I needed to understand better what they did and how, as it was giving me an operational answer to a problem I had been grappling with for some time: how to spot a client’s hidden and latent demands. And what better than a newborn baby? It cannot speak, it just gives signs of its situation and its parents are so stressed that they do not even know what they want. It was the ideal setting for spotting such demands and understanding how, without asking, to be able to translate what not even clients know that they want.

Basic Ideas Behind SPDM: A Unifying Model for Twenty-First-Century Operations

The complexity of Operations needs a guide that provides a simple way to structure actions while understanding the mixed impact they may have, while envisaging the possible difficulties that may arise. My life in Operations has been a constant search for KISS – Keep It Simple and Stupid. And a KISS approach is needed to understand the impact of actions on Operations.

The Hallmark of Mediocre Managers Is Hiring People Worse Than They Are

One day, after my final lecture in the Operations module in a PADE program at the IESE, a participant approached me and commented:

The Promise, Essence and Flame Red

Now that the general framework is in place, Chapter 3 outlines the components for translating strategy into Operations. Here we focus on the most abstract SPDM layer.

Service Industrialization to Unlock Brainpower Capacity

Looking at industrialization from the standpoint of unlocking brainpower capacity is an essential issue for SPDM. A recurring obsession in this book is creating value from the brains’ every second. We cannot afford to waste their time on jobs that can be industrialized and, furthermore, bore them rigid. Remember that if brains are not challenged they become bored, and if bored, they are unproductive. Let us banish everything that can be industrialized so that they can truly concentrate on tasks that add value for them and the company. But never, ever forget the Promise and the service’s proposed differential. Industrializing must add value to the Promise and the service, and help to unlock capacity. Let us not twist things and stumble into considerations that ruin the service.