Lean is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value that the end customer will pay for to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.

Lean Manufacturing focuses on eliminating waste in manufacturing processes. Being Lean is not about eliminating people. Lean is about expanding capacity by reducing costs and shortening cycle times between order and ship date.

Lean Services is the application of the lean manufacturing concept to service operations. It is distinct in that Lean services are not concerned with the making of ‘hard’ products.

• Reduces Costs By:
  • Reducing Delivery Time
  • Reducing Cycle Time
  • Reducing Setup Time
  • Eliminating Waste
  • Seeking Continuous Improvement.
• Improves Quality
• Improves Customer Ratings & Perceptions
• Increases Overall Customer Satisfaction
• Improves Employee Involvement, Morale, & Company Culture



Bagley Consulting is known for not only helping clients refine manufacturing and service strategy, but also seeing it through every phase of implementation. In the current economic environment, companies can no longer count on long runs to drive efficiency.

A company's supply chain often is one of the last remaining ways to generate dramatic growth. Significant technology improvements made available in recent years augment the opportunities for improvements in streamlining clients' supply chains and logistics. Today's small business leaders need proven solutions that are rapidly deployed and quickly implemented.

You don’t have to be Wal-Mart to benefit from logistics and supply chain improvements. Bagley Consulting works with clients to develop strategies that will improve supply chain performance and differentiate themselves from competitors. We bring about cost reduction and improved customer service for our clients by increasing reliability and decreasing the cycle time.

Are your processes perfect? Are your products or services delivered in the same way each and every time with little to no variability? Do your clients or customers get exactly what they expect, at the moment they want it, each and every time? Most companies cannot answer yes to any of these. By using Six Sigma tools, Bagley Consulting works with your staff to eliminate variation in your processes in order for you to provide consistent products and services to your customers.

Originally developed in 1981by Motorola, Six Sigma is a business management strategy which seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and eliminating the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing or in a service. A "sigma" is a term from statistics describing how much variation there is from the average. A true six-sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are defect free, compared to a one-sigma process in which ony 31% are free of defects.

Six Sigma projects follow a methodology based on W. Edward Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. This methodology is based on five phases which creates the acronym DMAIC.

• Define the goal or problem from the voice of the customer
• Measure the key aspects of the current process and collect all relevant data
• Analyze the data to identify cause-and-effect relationships
• Improve the current process based on the techniques, such as design of experiments or poka yoke, to create a new process
• Control the new process to ensure that any deviations are corrected before they result in defects

Bagley Consulting provides hands-on strategic direction, implementation and knowledge transfer services to help our clients outperform their competitors in revenue growth, cost reduction, productivity improvement, customer satisfaction and innovation.

Many times, an organization will put a quality improvement initiative is place to only acheive disappointing results. The problem is the constraint was never identified and addressed. When seeking to improve throughput, the entire system must be examined and only the constraint need be improved. Once the constraint moves to a new machine, process, etc., the new constraint is the focus of the next improvement.

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an overall management philosophy introduced by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt in 1984. Dr. Goldratt discovered that any manageable system is limited in achieving more of its goal by a very small number of constraints, and that there is always at least one constraint. The TOC process seeks to identify the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it, through the use of the Five Focusing Steps.

• Identify the Constraint
• Decide How to Exploit the Constraint
• Subordinate All Other Processes to Above Decision
• Elevate the Constraint
• If the Constraint Has Moved, Return to Step 1

A constraint is anything that prevents the system from achieving more of its goal. There are many ways that constraints can show up, but a core principle within TOC is that there are not tens or hundreds of constraints. There is at least one and at most a few in any given system. Constraints can be internal or external to the system. An internal constraint is in evidence when the market demands more from the system than it can deliver. If this is the case, then the focus of the organization should be on discovering that constraint and following the five focusing steps to open it up (and potentially remove it). An external constraint exists when the system can produce more than the market will bear. If this is the case, then the organization should focus on mechanisms to create more demand for its products or services. However, in most cases, constraints are internal.

Types of (internal) constraints

• Equipment: The way equipment is currently used limits the ability of the system to produce more salable goods/ services.
• People: Lack of skilled people limits the system. Mental models held by people can cause behaviour that becomes a constraint.
• Policy: A written or unwritten policy prevents the system from making more.

Bagley Consulting utilizes TOC to assist clients in order to increase net profits, reduce chaos in operations, decrease production lead time, reduce inventory (especially work-in-process), improve on-time delivery, and give the staff the ability to anylyze and resolve day-to-day conflicts.