5 levers (steps) to drive increased productivity

5 levers (steps) to drive increased productivity (extract – see 2x2). Get people who are brilliant at each of these – train them, invest in them. The Six Sigma crowd.

1. centralize: bring all operations under a single authority discipline to user maintenance requests
   
2. standardize: reduce variety of processes to delivery similar outputs to further reduce maintenance expenses. (Never do this before customers are willing.)
   
3. Simplify: prune processes to eliminate extra steps that add complexity without commensurate corporate value
   
4. automate: drive processes into software to increase productivity, using application packages wherever possible
   
5. outsource: drive processes out of the company to achieve the returns from outsourcing previously described