Last month, I attended my first ‘Continuing Professional Development’ (CPD) since joining the University. Fully qualified colleagues from the management accounting and financial services teams gathered in the Cantor building in the morning ready to absorb everything the day had to offer.

The focus of the day was on “Maximising Value and Efficiency from Management Accounting and Reporting”, which is really important and relevant to us at the moment as we move from 8-day quarterly reporting to 5-day monthly reporting period.

We started the day by reviewing LEAN principles and process improvement methodologies, sources of ‘waste’ in processes and efficiency measurements that ensure every output meets a need.

LEAN refers to the “tools that assist in the identification and steady elimination of waste”. These include Six Sigma, Kaizen and Activity Based Management / Costing.

The morning concluded with “The Lean Wastes Game” that helped us develop the ability to identify waste and categorise it in our processes. According to the LEAN principles, waste in processes is created through:

1. Transportation: Unnecessary physical or electronic movement of material and documents that adds no value to the process
2. Inventory: Anything waiting to be processed, i.e. items waiting to be worked on.
3. Motion: Unnecessary movement relating to a person, e.g. time it takes for people to walk to printers, meeting rooms, shredders etc
4. Waiting: People waiting for a work cycle to be completed before starting their tasks.
5. Over-processing: Doing more than is needed to reach the desired outcome
6. Over-production: Producing more than is needed
7. Defects: Where intervention is to needed to correct, add or clarify
   

The afternoon was more focused on our own internal processes; we were put into teams and asked to map out processes that we have in the directorate with the aim of categorising each activity and task as: Customer Value Adding, Business Value Adding or Diversionary. This exercise was an eye-opener for many of us as we were all aware there is room for improvement in some of our processes, but to see each task written down on a piece of paper with a label of the value it adds was the “wake-up call” we needed to take action.

We then focused on how visual management and graphics can be employed to better our stakeholders’ communication and reporting. The trainer concluded the day with Mohammed Ali’s famous quote:

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”

Change and improvement are not easy; they require time, persistence and courage, but once a process is enhanced, the benefits can be reaped for years to come….