Lean and Six Sigma Consulting Editing and Proofreading Services

Most improvement projects fail in the first paragraph. Somebody writes "improve efficiency in the packing area" at the top of a sheet, and eleven weeks later a team has mapped a process, run three workshops, and produced a set of actions that nobody can tell were worth doing — because nothing at the start said what specifically was wrong, by how much, or what the world would look like if it were fixed.

We edit what lean and continuous improvement practitioners produce — A3 reports and problem statements, project charters and scope documents, current and target condition descriptions, value stream map narratives, standard work documentation, kaizen event documentation and outcomes, control plan and sustainment documentation, DMAIC phase gate documentation, coaching and training material, benefit realisation and savings claims, and reporting to sponsors and steering groups. Our editors work on the first two boxes of the A3.

The problem statement and target condition are the whole of an improvement project, and their failure is describing a topic rather than a gap. "Improve efficiency" is an area of interest; a problem statement is a measured difference between what is happening and what should be happening, in a specific place, with a consequence. We work through these so the problem is quantified with the measure, the current level, the reference level and the gap, since a team given a number knows when to stop and a team given a topic never does; so the location and boundary are stated, because "the packing area" contains four processes and improving the wrong one is the commonest waste in this field; so the consequence is expressed in terms the organisation counts — hours, units, cost, late deliveries, safety events — as this is what makes the project defensible when resources are contested; so the target condition describes how the process will work rather than what the number will be, given that a target of a fifteen per cent improvement gives a team nothing to design towards and a description of the flow does; so any assumption about the cause is explicitly excluded from the problem statement, since a problem stated as "operators do not follow the standard" has decided the answer before the analysis; and so the date the gap was measured is recorded. Statements written this way produce projects that finish.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client data, project material and results. We are editors rather than improvement practitioners, and we offer no view on methods, analysis or results. What we can do is turn a topic into a measured gap.