Consultancy

Off-the-peg solutions are often cheap but do not fit very well. We ensure that our service provides what you need by tailoring what we do to your exact requirements. There are three main avenues in our consulting service -
• individual projects
• custom courses
• support after training

Individual projects
There will be many cases where you do not want training but only need help with a specific application. We offer a flexible service in these situations. Examples of what we have done in the past include:
• A two month, continuous placement to determine what should be measured in a production area to ensure quality. The final report described which characteristics of the process and product should be measured, how the results should be presented on the shop floor and in management meetings, and what reaction plans were necessary to cope with faults when they appeared.
• A one week assignment to investigate the reliability of electronic products in service. The report showed what levels of reliability were being achieved and what the trends were. It also gave an appropriate method to incorporate new data as they became available so that the client could maintain the monitoring system without further support.
• Analysis of temperature and humidity records in a library to assist with improvement of the air conditioning system. Most of the work was carried out off-site and the report indicated that the system was capable but suffered from an intermittent fault.
• Assisting a multi-national organisation to design trials on their manufacturing processes so that they could achieve consistent performance world-wide. This involved participation in planning meetings and the statistical analysis of large volumes of data.
• Short assignments ( hours, not days ) to assist with planning experiments, looking at manufacturing data, problem solving and so on. Sometimes all that is needed is a 10 minute telephone conversation - call us or send and email.

Custom courses
It is very rare for us to pull a "standard" course off the shelf and present it without making some modifications. Even when we return to a client for a repeat run of a training course there will usually be some changes from the previous time, typically to include new examples or exercises based on what the delegates have achieved.

Most of our training courses are based on short modules. This allows us to mix and match the materials so that we present what is useful to you while keeping the cost down. When new modules are needed we can write these at fairly short notice. If you want a course on problem solving, for example, what you get depends on which industry you are in, whether your interest is in continuous processes or complaints from customers, who the delegates are and many other factors. The final course could incorporate modules which were originally written for team work, reliability, Taguchi or flow charting.

The exercises are customised to reflect your products and processes. We are quite adept at taking our generic examples which include key learning points and then massaging them so that they are realistic in your context. Site visits and copies of your data before the course ensure that this is effective.

Support after training
There can be a gap of several months between training and a delegate putting the knowledge into practice. Most clients want to be reassured that they are applying what they learned correctly. We provide support by phone, fax and email for free. Sometimes all that is needed is a 5 minute phone call, sometimes we will spend half an hour looking at some results and then sending you our comments. All free.

Some clients require more sustained support after the training and in such cases this is costed in the proposals and quotations. Examples include
• Leading a team of production and engineering staff during risk assessments of new products using Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). The programme consisted of a one-day meeting every fortnight for several months.
• Assisting a problem solving team with one specific issue. This involved meetings of 1 or 2 hours every few weeks for three months.
• Chairing a one-day workshop where teams presented their achievements, three months after the training.