Newsletter

Stay up to date with everything happening at Blankpaper by exploring our monthly newsletters. Each edition is packed with the latest news, project highlights, and creative insights delivered straight to you. If you’ve missed an update or want to revisit a past feature, you can browse and view our full archive below.

Certification – What’s happening to our standards?

by | 24 September 2015 | Business Improvement, Certification, Learning, Productivity, Six Sigma, Training | 0 Comments

Today we want to discuss Six Sigma certification and the decaying of certification standards, an understanding of our journey to becoming Master Black Belts will help. I started out being trained as a Black belt in the first wave of Black belts trained outside of...
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Case Study 2: 13% Increase in Cell Phone Production Throughput

by | 28 May 2015 | Kaizen, Lean, Productivity, Results, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

This week we decided we should have a look at another case study. In this case a European  Cell Phone Manufacturer/Assembler with manufacturing plants in China. This Cell Phone manufacturer assembled  cell phones for one of a leading global cell phone brands. In this...
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5 Steps to complete a Process Analysis

by | 20 May 2015 | Kaizen, Lean, Productivity, Results, Throughput, Training, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Process Analysis is one of the key areas to making significant improvements in any process. Process Analysis can take various different forms however we’ll start at the beginning. When ever we start a Business Improvement Project there is always a process involved....
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How quickly can you really get improvements?

by | 13 May 2015 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Kaizen, Lean, Productivity, Results, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

We are often asked, how quickly can we achieve some improvements? In this day and age everyone wants to make improvements straight away. It’s understandable to want to get results right away however you need to remember that a process has not suddenly started...
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5 Steps to Effectively Graphically Analyse Your Data

by | 6 May 2015 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Productivity, Results, Six Sigma, Training, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Businesses collect data. If your business is like most businesses you have a lot of data, and  only a small proportion of the data is used in a meaningful way. However it is not uncommon to find that the data required for a Business Improvement Project does not exist....
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Q&A: Centralised versus Decentralised?

by | 1 May 2015 | Business Improvement, Kaizen, Lean, Pipeline, Productivity, Results, Risk, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Training | 0 Comments

When working on Business Improvement Deployments with larger clients we are almost always asked “Should our Business Improvement team have a centralised or a decentralised structure?” The answer is “it depends”. First lets take a look at what we mean by the two...
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2 Reasons You May be Making Decisions Based on Faulty Data

by | 28 April 2015 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Learning, Productivity, Results, Risk, Six Sigma, Training, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Business runs on data. In fact most companies have too much data. They collect a lot of data that’s not needed, and the data that is used contains errors. This data is usually used  to calculate averages and long term trends i.e: average output of a shift, average...
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4 Principles to help you to increase Process Flow; resulting in reduced cycle times, increased productivity and reducing costs

by | 21 April 2015 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Productivity, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Training, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

We've been involved in many improvement projects which generally can be categorised into the following objectives: Increasing throughput Reducing cycle times Increasing productivity (doing more with less) Increasing availability (outside of this article) Reducing...
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Case Study: 25% increased Throughput using TOC and Designed Experiments

by | 15 April 2015 | Productivity, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

An underground mining operation had been struggling with their Six Sigma program. The program had been underway for about 12 months and for various reasons had struggled to gain traction. 12 projects had been selected and were progressing at various paces. In mining,...
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Q&A: How would you get started if you needed quick results?

by | 7 April 2015 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Kaizen, Lean, Productivity, Results, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

We are often asked how to get started with making improvements. We have all been in the situation where we are not getting the results needed and we need to be seen to be do something let alone actually getting improved results? We will talk about what our experience...
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Q&A: What are the key elements for a successful deployment?

by | 17 February 2015 | Business Improvement, Lean, Pipeline, Productivity, Results, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints | 0 Comments

We were asked the following question by a client recently: “What are the key elements we need to consider in starting a Business Improvement Program” There is a ‘recipe’ that we use to guide any new Business Improvement initiative or when we are starting out with any...
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A ‘Goal Tree’ case study: Improving throughput for a Dispatching Operation

by | 29 January 2015 | Productivity, Results, Theory of Constraints, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

In the last blog post we discussed the Goal Tree. The Goal tree has become one of the critical tools that we use to help make rapid improvements. The Goal tree is not traditionally in the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge but has been part of the Theory of Constraints...
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The One Tool the “Business Improvement” Professional should have in their Arsenal.

by | 15 January 2015 | Business Improvement, Pipeline, Productivity, Results, Theory of Constraints, Theory of Constraints, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

We would like to move to a more technical article. We would like to discuss a tool that has become integral to generating results on our Business Improvement Projects. While this tool has become critical in helping provide clarity and direction to our improvement...
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Q&A: How many Black Belts do I need?

by | 28 November 2014 | Business Improvement, Pipeline, Productivity, Results, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

We are often asked this question, so thought we should address it here. Traditionally in a Six Sigma deployment the number that has been used is 2% of the workforce, that is 2% of the workforce should be Black Belts. That is 2 Black Belts per 100 staff. This 2% number...
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Just get Started?

by | 27 November 2014 | Business Improvement, Cost Reduction, Productivity, Results | 0 Comments

    Tough times ahead? What’s the choice for companies in terms of where to go from here with their existing Business Improvement programs? Scale it down like a number of companies we know, ramp it up, or maintain the status quo. In fact those very same...
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Q&A: First 5 questions you should be asking

by | 26 November 2014 | Business Improvement, Productivity, Results | 0 Comments

  Results below Expectations? What are the first 5 Questions you should be asking? We are frequently asked to help a client whose results are not up to expectations. They may have an existing business improvement program or even no business improvement program....
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Remove Constraints Maximise Flow

by | 25 November 2014 | Business Improvement, Pipeline, Theory of Constraints | 0 Comments

We are advocates for using Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma on our projects. We are methodology agnostic and believe that all three methodologies have a place at the appropriate time. To generate productivity gains there are a number of key elements that must...
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Productivity Gains are Vital

by | 19 November 2014 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

  On 25 August, 2013, CEO of BHP Billiton Andrew Mackenzie stated, “Growth for us, and growth for anybody, is growth in free cash flow and you can grow free cash flow in two ways: add more productive capacity by investing (and) you buy businesses by investing, or...
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What’s Your Problem?

by | 4 November 2014 | Lean, Pipeline, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Our middle manager is running a small but enthusiastic team of office workers. Our manager is armed with plenty of experience and enthusiasm but he's got a problem, an ongoing problem? One that the manager had thought would go away or correct itself with time. The...
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