News & Downloads

Lean Fundamentals

This paper sets out to describe where the Early Equipment Management(EEM) principle embedded within the TPM philosophy can bring substantial improvements to a company’s existing new product development and introduction processes involving capital physical assets. EEM is driven by a belief that behind the plant and equipment used in any production process there are three […]

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What makes a great Deployment Leader?

by Simon Grogan Great deployment leaders possess a unique set of skills and qualities that enable them to lead their teams toward Enterprise Excellence. Do you have what it takes? Ask yourself these three questions… I know who I am, what I’m good at, how I speak, listen, and think, I know what brings me […]

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Beyond The Buzz

Join Ishan Sellahewa as he talks through ‘Beyond The Buzz: Building your Future through Digital Transformation’ Contact Ishan with any questions: ishan.sellahewa@sapartners.com

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5 Great Reasons to Undertake an Assessment

We all need to grow, innovate and compete. To do this we need to have a deep understanding of our organization’s current state – hence the need to build a regular benchmarking assessment into your strategic plan. We’ve identified 5 compelling reasons to kick start an assessment: Identifying Gaps One of the primary reasons to […]

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The Power of Benchmarking

By Ailsa Carson, Partner Benchmarking is defined as the act or practice of measuring something against a standard, or of testing in order to develop such a standard[i]. Most organizations that are invested in best practice or continuous improvement will use benchmarking either formally or informally to support their journey. It can take place within […]

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The Role of Leadership in Digital Transformation

By Jack Worboys, Consultant  Technology is changing the world in which we live faster and more exponentially than ever. Our use of technology pervades every aspect of our lives and it is therefore imperative that every organisation has a digital transformation that is aligned to their strategic objectives. It is however all too easy to get […]

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Managing Process Variations

  Join Ishan Sellahewa as he talks through ‘Managing Process Variations’

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Achieving Excellence: How To Leverage process optimisation & automation Webinars 1 & 2
Sessions 1 & 2 of our partnered workshop with Synergi all around process optimisation and automation Achieving Excellence: How To Leverage process optimisation & automation session 1 & 2 First Name* Last Name* Work Email Company:* CAPTCHA Save and Continue Later
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Case Study: Blenders Transformation Year 1 to Year 3

In 1989, the Simpson family founded Blenders and have been perfecting sauces for over 30 years. Today, the second generation, Harry and James, lead a dedicated and experienced team.   S A Partners were brought in for an initial benchmarking assessment and established the next steps to continue their journey to excellence. From lean awareness […]

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Shingo Journey Guide
Check out our latest guide to your Shingo Journey – an approach to truly sustainable Enterprise Excellence.
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Delivering Process Improvement

We all want to improve the way that we work. Process improvement (digital or otherwise) doesn’t just happen though, someone has to drive these projects. Whose responsibility should this be? Should we ask our divisions to improve their own processes or do we create a transformation team to do it for them.     To start, […]

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How to align, engage and improve using effective Tiered meetings Webinar Recording
Join Sonja Allen and Megan James for this bite size webinar where they will share how to improve the effectiveness of your tiered or cross-organisational meetings using the tried and tested AEI (Align, Engage, Improve) System. Discover the principles, features and key benefits of deploying an AEI system​.​ Download the recording here. How to align, engage [...]
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Speak To Lead: How To Embrace Your Challenge Voice Webinar Recording
Are you ready to revolutionize the way you communicate and lead? Doctor of Psychology Bryan Cutliff leads this webinar centred around the transformative concept of the “challenge voice”. Discover how this unique and dynamic vocal technique can reshape your interactions, amplify your influence, and supercharge your team’s productivity. Speak To Lead: How To Embrace Your [...]
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Why Curiosity is Essential for Gemba

In the world of effective leadership, one invaluable skill often goes overlooked—Gemba. While Gemba is often associated with process improvement, its true power lies in its ability to transform leadership communication. In this blog, we’ll explore the critical role of communication in Gemba and provide you with two essential tips to enhance your Gemba skills […]

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The SHINGO© Model that drives Enterprise Excellence & the focus on Culture & Behaviours that matter

By John Quirke, Author In 1988 as a recognition for his work across a broad range of industry sectors, Shigeo Shingo was awarded an honorary Doctor of Management from Utah State University.  Over the course of his life Dr. Shingo wrote eighteen books on the improvement of work and the processes that support the effectiveness […]

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Why do team members get offended by your challenges?

Why do people get offended by our challenge voice?  The challenge voice is one of the voices we most readily recognize; it’s the voice that stimulates our prehistoric brain most easily.  It triggers our most primitive reactions – flight, fight, or freeze.  Typically, when we are challenged, we know we have been so. When people […]

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Successful Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is at the top of everyone’s agenda however studies show that 70% of Digital Transformation efforts fail. The people who achieve success don’t do so by accident and, in this 15 minute webinar, Ishan Sellahewa explains what sets success apart from failure.  

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Aligning Process Management with Enterprise Excellence

I’m guessing that, given you’ve taken the time out of your day to read a blog on process management, you understand the importance of having clear and current documented processes. What we all need to remember though is that while process documentation is a necessity, it will do nothing on its own. This is why […]

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Align, Engage, Improve with Effective Tiered Meetings

By Sonja Allen Have you ever considered… How many meetings you have a week? How many of these meetings could be an email? How many of these meetings have few or no results? How many rabbit holes do your meeting conversations go down? How regularly do you talk about what really matters, in a focused […]

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Lean Fundamentals: The Problem with Problem Solving
Across various industries, there has been a consistent demand to improveproblem-solving skills within businesses. Organizations often prioritize theuse of problem-solving tools and approaches, considering probleminvestigation and resolution as critical aspects of regulatory compliance.However, the prevailing culture associated with compliance-drivenproblem solving often leads to shallow investigations, rushed resolutions,and recurring issues. Download The Problem with Problem Solving
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Pocket Guide to: Changeover Optimisation
Manufacturing organisations are under pressure to increase productivity and improve flexibility & responsiveness to customer needs. Changeover optimisation is a means of improving performance to create a more flexible manufacturing environment. Equipment flexibility & responsiveness are core requirements of all modern manufacturing thinking and largely determined by process changeover capability. To download click the download [...]
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Managing Regional Process Variation

Many of the clients that I work with operate out of multiple national and global sites. This then naturally gives rise to the question ‘how do we deal with these geographic variations?’ I doubt I need to explain in too much detail why organisations want to get rid of their variations, there can’t be two […]

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Does Process Management Hinder Creativity?

Often, when I talk about process management and explain the benefits of having clear processes with detailed work instructions, I’ll get pushback like ‘we hire professionals to do a job, we don’t want to tell them exactly how to do it’.   In short, the push back is on how much detail the process needs. The […]

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Celebrating 30 years of S A Partners

We are 30 years old and we are celebrating just how far we have come.. from our early years as a spin-out from Cardiff University’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) our founders Peter Hines & Paul Morris founded a company that now has a global team and offices in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the USA, […]

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How to Sell Process Management

Driving engagement with Process Management requires more than just telling your people that they must now be process driven. Lets consider the Prosci change management model. This clearly demonstrates the need to manage not just the technical side of change (documenting processes), but also the people side of change to enable a transition from the […]

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Digital Transformation in your organisations improvement journey – FREE webinar recording
Ishan Sellahewa and Conor Dawson presented at the recent Lean Business Ireland Conference. During the presentation, they discussed how organisations can use Digital Transformation to move from a state of chaos to consistency and truly achieve business excellence View the full webinar and transcript below Digital Transformation in your organisations improvement journey recording First Name* [...]
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Process Management and Risk

Speaking with Risk Managers, I find that risk management is often performed in Excel. There’ll be a ‘Risk Register’ file, where (generally) the Risk team document an exhaustive list of risks in one column, and in another column treatments/ controls for those risks. This Excel file typically lives in a SharePoint folder, is maintained by […]

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DEEP EXCELLENCE: A call to action for a new style of leadership

This book will challenge your thinking about how you lead; and how you can add value to those around you.  You will discover and explore ways in which you can bring meaning to your work and how you can engage the heads; hands and hearts to create a culture of Deep Excellence in your organization.   […]

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Process Management and Agile

Periodically when talking about process management, I’ll be told ’process management isn’t for us, we’re agile’.  Is agile a fair excuse to avoid process management? Short answer, in my opinion, absolutely not; in fact an agile environment makes process management more important if anything. Here’s why.   Agile and the Agile Trap First, let’s start […]

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Understanding Lean Leadership

By MEGAN JAMES, European Business Development Manager I previously shared the S A Partners implementation model for Enterprise Excellence and how to use this to build effective training programmes. In case you missed it, you can find it HERE. I received some great queries specifically about the design of the Leadership element so I wanted […]

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Resourcing For Successful Process Management

Process Management: The Ikea Approach    What does Ikea and Process Management have in common?     The decentralisation of the build phase. One way in which Ikea is able to offer furniture at a price point below its competition is that, unlike its competitors who pay labourers to assemble their furniture, Ikea makes use […]

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Case Study: Launching a multi-site Lean Programme in the Utilities Sector

Over the last five years, we have been supporting one of Europe’s largest utility companies to implement a multi-site/organisation-wide Lean programme. This paper shares how this organisation built both Leadership and Lean Capability throughout their organisation, as well as how the transformation programme has continued to deliver a return on investment.

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Making a Sustainable Impact Full Recording & Transcript
During this webinar, Dr. Bryan Cutliff & Dr. Jeff Radford share their personal experiences, ideas, and techniques that have helped them, and a number of organizations overcome organizational and personal adversity while leading national institutions. We will discuss how to build a sustainable culture of excellence, and the need to stay true to your purpose [...]
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Process Standardisation and Stabilisation

When embarking on an improvement journey, organisations too often give into temptation and jump directly to process improvement, either by designing a new, optimised, Lean process, or attempting to immediately create a digitised, automated version of their existing manual process.   While this approach of skipping ahead to your desired future state may seem like […]

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S A Partners Launches Online Learning Capability

Well, ok we may be a bit slow starting but I promise you that we have caught up fast. Over the past three years with the impact of COVID19 we have seen a significant shift in the way we all learn, we have become more comfortable with the use of technology in how we develop […]

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Why I’m uneasy with the term ‘True North’ by John Quirke

I came in for a bit of teasing by a work colleague recently over my uneasiness with the term True North.   We were working with a leadership community in a large automotive business, and he used the term True North, which brought about an obvious and over exaggerated wince from me which raised a few […]

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From Control to Collaboration – discover the new era of Digital Process Management Full Recording
Join Ishan Sellahewa & Jack Worboys for a look into how digital process management platforms can help organisations improve by creating clear and sophisticated process maps, real-time feedback & collaboration, optimizing processes; eliminating and removing waste and bottlenecks; driving standardization and continuous improvement; and encouraging collaboration. We are all aware of the benefits of process [...]
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6 Requirements for Successful Process Management

Too often organisations think that successfully rolling out process management (‘PM’) means simply providing their team members with a process mapping tool, some basic training, and expecting it to just get done. This approach will invariably result in either nothing getting done, or processes being mapped but never followed or updated. While PM might not […]

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Take the TPM Interactive Awareness Course
S A Partners have created an interactive Total Productive Manufacturing (TPM) awareness course that takes you through the background of TPM step by step. You can access this course by filling out the form below, and you will then receive the awareness course link. The purpose of this interactive awareness course is to get you [...]
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Case Study: Develpoment of a Lean Academy in a Global Corporation

Our client was a global corporation with a head office in the USA. It supplies products to customers in 135 countries and employs over 12,000 employees worldwide generating revenue of over US $2 billion. Although successful, the business recognized significant opportunities for improvement back in 2020, aspiring to develop their own version of the Toyota […]

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Celebrating 12 Years of Lean Competency Accreditation

Successful Re-Accreditation of Training, Assessment & Certification Services to the Lean Competency System (licensed by Cardiff University) S A Partners and Cardiff University – through the Lean Enterprise Research Centre and the Lean Competency System have a long-standing heritage. After 12 years, we are now celebrating the successful re-accreditation of S A Partners Trainers, Coaches and […]

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White Paper: Packaging Changeovers in Pharmaceutical Sector

  Check out our latest white paper on Packaging Changeovers in the Pharmaceutical Industry Over the last twenty-five years, pharmaceutical companies and packaging operations have struggled to respond quickly to market demand. Added to this, operational inefficiencies; the increase in the number and complexity of product configurations; and the ongoing demand for compliance has made […]

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Embracing Continuous Improvement in HR – Video and Transcript
View the full webinar and transcript of our recent webinar featuring Sharon Von Simson "Embracing Continuous Improvement in HR" Embracing CI in HR Download First Name* Last Name* Work Email Company:* CAPTCHA
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S A Partners Named a Winner in 2022 Nintex Partner Awards
London, UK—September 28, 2022— S A Partners is pleased to announce it has been recognized as a Regional Spotlight Award winner of the 2022 Nintex Partner Awards. S A Partners was recognized for its proven ability to help organizations accelerate digital transformation and drive business outcomes with the powerful and easy-to-use capabilities of the Nintex Process Platform. [...]
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A Time To Celebrate
A Time to Celebrate   In May 2022 the SHINGO Institute recognized our team with a coveted SHINGO Publication Award for our book - TPM: A foundation of Operational Excellence.    The team behind the book, the authors Peter Willmott, Andy Brunskill, and John Quirke along with Alex Everitt our graphic designer,  were able to finally meet [...]
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Celebrating Ideal Behaviours
Every July we recognize some of our amazing team for their contribution to the business.  This annual award is given each July and builds on our monthly reward and recognition program. Both of the programs are designed to recognize those individuals that go above and beyond in demonstrating our core values and the behaviours we [...]
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Why Do An Assessment?
Enterprise Excellence is the goal for most, however so few organsitions achieve it, and even fewer sustain it. Having worked with many organsiations over the years on this journey I know it is rarely a simple journey, or one that can be copied from others. It’s not something a leader can impose, or build on [...]
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Systems – The Architecture of Deep Excellence and Sustainability
“In spite of the fact that management is responsible for the system, or for lack of the system, I find in my experience that few people in industry know what constitutes a system.” W Edward Deming   If you want to learn something new read an old book, said a wise man once. It is [...]
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Team Celebrates Shingo Publication Award for TPM: A foundation of Operational Excellence
On May 19 in Orlando, Florida, John Quirke, Life Science Practice Leader at global consulting company, S A Partners, received the SHINGO Publication Award on behalf of the team for the book TPM (Total Productive Manufacturing): A Foundation of Operational Excellence.  John, along with business colleagues Andy Brunskill and Peter Willmott, are authors of the [...]
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Celebrating Our New Doctor of Psychology – Bryan Cutliff
Congratulations to Bryan Cutliff, a pivotal member of our US Division who has recently been awarded his Doctor of Psychology in Leadership Psychology.  Bryan has brought a unique insight into leadership and the psychology of leading change to our team over recent years.  Having worked previously in executive leadership positions in healthcare in the US, [...]
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