From the course: Operational Excellence Foundations

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Variation

Variation

- A customer places an order and is told it will take two to 10 days for delivery. You make a request for a transaction in your company and you're told it will happen in five to 10 days. Why is there so much variation? A more important question is what happens when you try to promise, budget, staff, schedule, and plan on getting things done correctly and on time when there is so much variation? The answer is with a lot of difficulty, uncertainty, increased costs, and mixed results and performance such as not meeting deadlines, not meeting surface level agreements, and other contractual obligations. Not to mention, upsetting customers and potential loss of business. Let's understand variation. Let's say there are five activities or processing steps needed to complete a transaction. These steps could be mapped onto many different kinds of processes. So, think about a process that's relevant to your work. It can be manufacturing, services, or healthcare. But no matter what the process…

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