Trained teams are often used in process improvement only to find what is obvious to anyone working with the process. Each of the popular process improvement systems like Theory of Constraints, Lean Manufacturing, and Six Sigma has high implementation costs. While these methods are valuable in evaluating ideas, often they cannot be supported in a zero capital world.
Conventional project development fails without capital. The standard way to look at projects is to quantify the problems and then select the project correcting the most deficiencies. Cost is only evaluated after we determine the deficiency to correct. In this zero capital world there is often no money or people for the process review and even less to fix the identified deficiencies. Capital spending in the U.S. at the end of 2008 was off more than 20 percent from 2007.
What is needed in the current economic climate is innovative ways to continue process improvements without capital resources.
Source: Industry Week